


The First Five Times

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Episode: s05e04 The End, Exhibitionism, Existential Angst, Existentialism, F/M, First Time, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Group Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Jealousy, M/M, Mindfuck, Multi, Orgy, Philosophy, Profound Bond, Psychological Trauma, Public Sex, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sad with a Happy Ending, Time Travel, Violence, Voyeurism, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:01:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 43,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2032860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There was one goal from then on. No more saving people, hunting things. No more family business. Only one goal remained, because it was the only goal left...</p><p>Survive."</p><p>***</p><p>After Sam accepts being used as Lucifer's vessel, Dean's insurmountable grief and blinding rage lead him to seek comfort in his newly fallen angel.</p><p>In other words, this is the story of how it came to "The End."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2009

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suluvmanga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suluvmanga/gifts).



> Prompt fill for [suluvmanga](http://suluvmanga.tumblr.com/): "I’d love to see a drunk Dean in a conversation with someone about the cliche plots of soaps and dramas. “Why do I need to watch someone fall in love with the wrong person? I’m already living that.” Or maybe unrequited love? Up to you if Cas overhears and where it leads. ;). Thanks."
> 
> I took quite a bit of creative license with this prompt, though. Sorry about that.
> 
> The plot is based off of the song ["The First Five Times"](http://youtu.be/HQ9nlXaX7kU) by Stars, from one of my favorite albums of all time, _Set Yourself on Fire_. There's also a fantastic remix album called _Do You Trust Your Friends?_ that has [a great cover version](http://youtu.be/K697IgIBGsc) of the song by the Russian Futurists.
> 
> Obviously, the tone of this fic more closely mirrors the Russian Futurists version.
> 
> Please note that this fic is dark as hell.
> 
> Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. Check the links below for updates on all my stuff and things.
> 
> Updates: I [made a mix](http://rd.io/x/Rl56LEMv8M6K/) for this fic of songs that remind me of the endverse.
> 
> For those of you reading this as a completed work, I didn't stick completely to canon, rather I tried fixing it. There's no Bobby (because I don't want Bobby to die AGAIN), there is Charlie, and a couple colorful OCs that I promise are not all about me sucking my own dick. This story is rough goings, but those who've made it through have all had very good things to say about it. It's philosophically and symbolically resounding, if you're into that kind of thing.

_The first time in the backyard_  
 _Underneath the plastic sheeting_  
 _Outside it was pouring_  
 _And we were drunk as shit_

***

Nothing mattered anymore.

Sam was just... _gone_. His body was somewhere around Detroit, inhabited by the goddamn devil, and his soul was...

Dean didn't like to think about where Sam's soul was.

There was one goal from then on. No more saving people, hunting things. No more family business. Only one goal remained, because it was the only goal left...

Survive.

It was tough, at first, but Dean would be lying if he said he didn't love it. Somewhere deep down in his ragged, tortured soul, he _loved_ fucking up croats. He loved not having to hide his weaponry. All he had to do was strap it on and walk down the street, bullets and blood and shards of bone flying when he saw that manic glint in their mindless eyes.

He stormed down empty streets, fearless, blasting caution to the fucking wind because he had nothing left to lose, every smattering of grey matter against brick bringing him an inch closer to the numbness he so desperately craved.

At night, he'd find a bottle of booze and some high ground to lay his head, and he'd scream. He'd shriek into the sky, drunk as fuck and sobbing until he couldn't breathe. Not giving a rat's ass if the croats found him, he would look up at the pitch black sky and shout, _"MICHAEL! I TAKE IT BACK. THE ANSWER IS YES. Pull me outta this hell, man! You gotta take me out of here!"_ When he would finally scream himself hoarse, he'd fall asleep in his nightly drunken stupor, rocking himself back and forth on the cold ground, mumbling, "Yes. I take it back. The answer is yes," over and over again.

But Michael never answered.

***

Somewhere along the line, he met back up with Cas and Chuck. Somewhere further along the line, he met up with some more people. Then, when he finally reached the end of the line, he located a decent compound. 'Some more people' eventually turned into 'a lot more people,' and somehow, all of them, scared and defenseless, looked at Dean to guide them.

It was bullshit, really.

Dean had paid his dues in human-rescuing, and now it was time for some much-deserved croat-slaughtering. He had no interest in helping the greater good anymore. All he wanted was blood.

At first, he told them all to go away. He would hug his whiskey bottle tight to his chest and duct tape the flap of his makeshift tent shut when Chuck would come to him with his stupid clipboard and ask dumb questions. When he asked the safest way to the nearest abandoned grocery store to get baby formula for a young mother, rescued by some idiot who thought he was a hero, Dean told him to go fuck himself. Then he turned around on the cold, damp grass, using a duffel bag full of machine guns as a pillow, and tried to go back to sleep.

He sighed when his tent door flapped open, the loud ripping sound of the duct tape un-sticking from the tarp making him wince in his constant state of teetering on the edge between drunk and hungover.

Strong hands shoved Dean forward as the person entered the tent, and Dean rolled off the duffel, face planted onto the grass. Muffled, he asked, "What the fuck was that for?"

A familiar, perpetually grouchy voice replied, "Of course I'm going to save a mother with an infant, Dean. I may have lost my grace, but I'm not a monster."

No more ‘hello, Dean’s. New Castiel always got right to the fucking point.

When Dean didn't respond, Cas added, "I'm not like you. I'm not going to let this situation destroy me."

Dean groaned and sat up, rubbing his forehead and pulling his knees into his chest. Dean had no interest in talking about ‘this situation,’ so he asked, "When the fuck are those bunks going to be finished? I'm tired of sleeping out here."

"They would get finished faster if our fearless leader would sober up and help."

Dean glared at him.

Cas glared right back.

"I'm not your fearless goddamn leader," Dean spat out.

Cas sneered, "Well you're the closest piece of shit we've got to one, so unless you want all those innocent people to die out there, you better quit moping and get your ass in gear because, frankly, we're all tired of your bullshit."

Dean didn't know when Cas, looking more ragged and human every damn day, picked up his newfound vernacular, but Dean missed his weird vocal cadence, completely bereft of contractions and slang. He missed Cas's innocence, violently stripped from him along with his grace, and he became just a dude, strung out on pills he stole from abandoned pharmacies which did god-knows-what to his poor, tortured mind. Dean watched his spiral downward, and all he could do was lift his glass in solidarity and applaud Cas's valiant aspirations to become just as fucked up as Dean.

Smiling at himself, Dean opened his bottle of whiskey and took a long pull from it, then held it out to Cas. "You into downers today, or did you manage to get your druggy little hands on some more speed?"

Cas rolled his eyes at him in reply and grabbed the bottle from his hands, lifting it to his lips to gulp down a couple shots worth. He swallowed and handed the bottle back to Dean, saying with a grimace, "It tastes like someone set urine on fire and poured it down my throat."

Dean nodded and took another swig. "But it gets the job done. Don't see how it's better than snorting pills though. Shit fucks you up, man."

Shrugging, Cas lay down on the machine gun pillow and stared up at the ceiling of the tent. The blue plastic cast an eerie glow over his features, exaggerating the shadows under his eyes and the permanent stubble on his face. His clothes were tattered and dirty, just like Dean's, holes popping up here and there, everyone smelling awful and no one giving a shit about it. "I guess I just prefer being manic to being depressed," Cas replied, clasping his hands together over his stomach.

Dean capped the whiskey bottle and tossed it to the side, then lay down next to Cas, shoulders pressed together. "I'd rather be neither, though."

They lay silent together for a long time, until the clouds overhead clashed and clattered with rolling thunder, and the small amount of light coming into the tent dimmed even further. Large drops of rain began spattering onto the tarp and rolling down the sides in thick rivulets.

Dean started to feel the effects of drinking half a bottle of whiskey in the span of the last particularly dark hour. His focus waned, and his muscles relaxed, easing into the still-comforting touch of his fallen angel. "You know what I miss?" he asked, breaking the silence.

"Hmm?"

"Soap operas."

Cas rolled onto his side to stare at Dean. Narrowing his eyes, he repeated, "Soap operas."

"Yeah," Dean said, turning toward Cas and gazing into those beautiful blues that once held the entire universe, but which had slowly stormed over, becoming filled only with sadness, fear, and utter contempt for Dean Winchester. "I'm man enough to admit I like soap operas," he slurred with a wave of his hand. "I’ve always been able to acknowledge that my life is shitty enough that sometimes it feels pretty damn good to get wrapped up in someone else's drama."

Cas nodded, lips twitching up in a small, bemused smile.

"And you know what else? My love life has always been shit too. Sometimes I just wanna... live someone else's love life, you know? It's so much better than having to live in this fucking box."

"What do you mean?" Cas asked, smile falling into his characteristic eye squint of curiosity.

"I mean," Dean shook his head and closed his eyes, "that it totally sucks having to look at your stupid face every day and not be able to do a damn thing about it–" His eyes shot open as he interrupted his the drunken oncoming train wreck of a rant.

Cas huffed a condescending laugh in response, completely unfazed by Dean’s predictable albeit heretofore unsaid admission. "Dean, you've always been welcome to do whatever the hell you wanna do about it. You know I don't give a fuck whether you want to fight me or fuck me or both."

Dean, seriousness etched over his features, replied, "That's just it, Cas. You don't fucking care. You don't care if I love you or I hate you. You always just seem so goddamn... indifferent."

Cas's expression finally faltered, stoicism replaced with the anger and irritation Dean saw more and more of every day. "You have got to be kidding me."

"No," Dean scoffed. "I'm serious." He shoved at Cas's shoulder. "Just because you raised me from hell and died for me all those times and all the other shit you did for me– _do_ for me– does not fucking mean you want my tongue in your mouth. I mean, I know you'd do whatever the fuck I want you to do, but I just... I want you to want me back. That's all I've ever wanted..." Dean trailed off, averting his gaze and plucking at the grass below them, suddenly shy.

Cas rubbed a hand over his face. “You are a motherfucking moron, Dean Winchester. If I could throw you back in hell for being an emotionally stunted bag of dicks, I would.”

Dean looked up from his grass-plucking, brow furrowed as he replied with an irate, “Hey—“

Cas interrupted Dean by fisting the front of Dean’s shirt in his hand and dragging their chests together, stopping when their faces were mere inches apart to grumble, “Fucking idiot,” before crashing their mouths together.

Like everything in this new world of theirs, it was dirty and harsh, teeth clashing, a furious biting of lips and battle of tongues. Cas tasted like weed and homemade toothpaste, a not altogether bad combination, Dean found. It reminded him of what Cas would probably be like were he a real human living a real human life, chilling in the middle of fucking nowhere with his patchouli soap and yoga, hydroponic farm at his disposal while teaching free meditation classes in an abandoned barn.

It took Dean until this moment to figure out that Cas was kind of in his element out here. He wasn’t happy, no one was happy, but here was as good a place as any to learn about the realities of the human condition.

Cas pulled Dean in closer, strong, frantic hands all over Dean’s body, shoving themselves under Dean’s jacket and up his shirt, feeling up and then scratching down his shoulders and back.

Dean gasped into his mouth and wrapped his leg around Cas’s waist, drunkenly relishing in the feel of Cas’s stubble against his face and the ability to really unleash himself and his frustrations onto this man who, out of anyone Dean had ever known, could absolutely take it.

Pushing Dean away, Cas asked, “Aren’t you concerned someone might hear us? We’re in the middle of a field covered in tarps that people are sleeping under. This isn’t particularly discreet.”

Dean pulled Cas’s hand up from his chest and brought his wrist to his mouth, biting down on the sensitive flesh and feeling his pulse between his teeth, a much needed reminder that Cas was alive and with him in this shitty tent, and that this wasn’t just a drunken lucid dream.

Cas’s eyes fluttered closed and his mouth opened in shock, a small gasp escaping his lips.

“I don’t give a fuck anymore, Cas,” Dean growled, shoving Cas’s hand down onto his crotch to feel his hardness. When Cas palmed his dick in response, Dean let out a small groan and whispered, “Tired of this fucking box,” before pulling Cas back into him for another bout of ferocious making out. Between kisses, he added, “This is so much better than a fucking soap opera.”

With an unexpected amount of strength, Cas rolled Dean onto his back and settled between his legs, unbuttoning his jeans with one hand while holding himself up with the other, hand on the damp grass below them, tongue continually sweeping into Dean’s mouth between nips and bites of his lips.

“Why am I on the bottom?” Dean asked through a sharp exhale as Cas reached into his pants to grab his length and pull at it with sure hands, loose grip twisting at the top just the way Dean liked it.

Cas broke away from the kiss to trail hot marks down Dean’s throat, pulling skin between his lips and sucking on it until it stung. Muffled in his neck, Cas replied, “You can’t expect me to stare at these beautiful bow legs every damn day and not want them wrapped around me while I fuck you.”

Dean let out an embarrassingly loud moan in response. He’d never heard Cas talk like this, so honest and fucking _filthy_ that, despite the alcohol, despite the jagged ground and machine guns underneath him digging into his back, despite the fact that this was his first time with a dude and he should have freaked out but didn’t—and he wondered what that really said about him—he was worried he might come already, Cas’s hands unrelenting in their domination.

“You forget,” Cas continued, removing his hand from Dean’s dick to sit up and pull his t-shirt over his head, “I’ve been in your dreams, Dean. I’ve been in your head. I know everything you want, everything you like.” He leaned back down to kiss Dean again, mouth soft and hot on his own, then pulled away once more to look Dean in the eye and add, “No one knows you as well as I do, Dean. I’ve seen your soul.”

Dean gaped at those words, throat constricted as he struggled to breathe, his emotional barriers crumbling under his drunkenness and the weight of Cas’s true affections bearing down on him. “Cas…” he whispered, pulling him back down to press their lips together again and reaching down to undo Cas’s belt buckle with clumsy fingers.

He shoved his hand into Cas’s pants to feel the length of his cock in his fist, already rock hard, and it made Dean’s dick pulse in response, knowing after all these years that Cas wanted Dean, was really physically attracted to him, and Dean didn’t know that was so goddamn important until this moment, writhing underneath a fallen angel with a flourishing drug addiction while baring his heart to a broken man.

Cas’s eyes closed as Dean stroked him, face hovering over Dean’s and panting softly, one arm propping himself up and the other lying gently on Dean’s hip, exposed, jeans having ridden down his waist in the scuffle of whatever the hell this really was. He ran his hand up Dean’s side, under his shirt, trailing his fingertips up and down until ghosting over his hip and up the length of his dick.

Dean let out a low groan while Cas remained silent but for his heavy breathing, stuttering his hips into Dean’s fist as Dean jerked him at a slow and even pace, cock heavy and leaking in his palm as he slicked cum around his shaft, filthy wet noises becoming louder with each pump of his fist. With his other hand, he groped at the soft, warm skin of Cas’s back, feeling the corded muscles tensing and straining as they took each other apart.

A familiar, burning hot coil tightened in Dean’s stomach as he stared up at Cas, whose eyes were closed and mouth lax, wanton lust etched over his still angelic features but for the thin sheen of dirt and rain and sweat. Dean hadn’t realized until that moment how much he wanted this. Maybe he did know it, but he never admitted it to himself. He never admitted to himself how much he wanted Cas to be _his_ guardian angel, no one else’s. He never admitted to himself how greedy and selfish he was around Cas, always wanting to take, to possess, to need. He never admitted to himself how much he wanted to see what this beautiful being looked like when inside the heady throes of lovemaking.

Cas’s hips shuddered erratically into Dean’s fist, and his grip loosened on Dean’s cock, becoming completely arrhythmic, which made Dean skirt on the surface of a slow build-up, reacting more to Cas’s reactions than the feel of the long, deft fingers on his dick.

“Dean, I—“ Cas began, voice impossibly deep, dragging over gravel as he interrupted himself with a gasp, his mouth opening wider and his eyes shutting tight, body tensing above Dean.

Dean reached down into the back of the waistline of Cas’s jeans and grabbed his ass, then trailed his hands up the crack of it, barely ghosting over his entrance, and that’s all it took for Cas to come over Dean’s fist with a choked cry, pausing his own fist on Dean’s dick as he pulsed with the waves of his orgasm.

As he rode it down, he picked up the speed of his fist on Dean’s cock, and Dean lasted only moments before coming with a shout, grasping onto Cas for dear life as Cas pulled him through his orgasm with the same firm, unyielding grip which dragged Dean from the pits of hell so many years ago.

Cas collapsed on his side with a huff of breath, and brought his hand up to wipe on Dean’s shirt.

“Thanks,” Dean said, then wiped his hand on Cas’s jeans in turn.

Cas looked down at his jeans, still open, softening dick hanging out of them. “Thanks,” he mimicked with a small smile, devious eyes gazing up at Dean.

They lay staring at each other, silent, until Cas shifted to curl into Dean, pressing his head beneath Dean’s chin and wrapping his arms around his waist. Dean tangled their legs together, bare hips and sticky skin pressed against each other, and it was dirty and gross and weird, but, Dean realized, they were both kind of dirty, gross, weird people, so it was befitting, and it was comfortable.

For the first time since Sam accepted Lucifer, Dean felt okay. Everything was still shit, but he had Cas in his arms and the sound of rain over his head, the smell of wet grass and bad weed and gunpowder surrounding them, which Dean was beginning to associate with the smell of their new home. He kissed the top of Cas’s head, damp with rain and sweat, and took a deep breath, forcing himself to remember this moment, put it in his back pocket for when he knew he would need it again.

Voice soft and sleepy, Cas broke the silence, and mumbled in Dean’s chest, “You’re still a fucking idiot though.” Then he lifted his head to look into Dean’s eyes, and added, “But you _are_ a leader. You’re _our_ leader. Whether you want to be or not. We need you, Dean.” Cas paused and, searching Dean’s face, added, “I need you.”

Dean leaned down and kissed Cas once more, sweet and soft and chaste. He broke away, running his fingers through Cas’s hair, staring at him for a long moment before nodding his head slowly, and whispering, “I know.”


	2. 2010, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It looks like I've introduced something of a plot, and I wasn't able to finish this chapter tonight, so I'll be posting it in two parts.

_Next time, at a party_   
_When all our friends were there_   
_There's nothing like their mattresses_   
_Underneath the stair_

***

Over the span of the next several months, Dean had a great many ups and downs. He had a few good days, but mostly he had bad ones. Most days were spent laboring, making tough decisions, and getting through nights of fitful sleep in the small barrack he took for himself.

It took Dean a long time, but he quit drinking and stepped up as leader. At least, he _told_ people he quit drinking, and he started _acting_ like a leader, but really he had a glass or six of whiskey every night and had no goddamn clue what he was doing.

And still, he only wanted blood.

After what Dean lovingly began referring to in his head as "The Tentjob," he and Cas went right back to where they were before it happened. Dean sobered up, pretended they hadn't come in each other's fists, and he took Cas's silence on the matter as agreement with Dean on the denial of it all.

The only side effect was that Dean couldn't look at Cas the same way anymore. It wasn't that he looked at him sexually or romantically, because he always had and was decent at shoving all of it into the dark, dusty closet of his unconscious mind.

It was that he looked at Cas possessively.

Cas was no longer Cas's problem and Cas's problem alone. Cas became Dean's problem, so when he did something stupid, like try a new drug, which he did on an almost weekly basis, Dean's heart thudded into his gut with fear. He could no longer dismiss Cas's oft dangerous levels of curiosity with a flick of his wrist and go about his merry way. He had to sit there in the latrines, rubbing Cas's back and consoling him while he vomited up whatever combination of pills and booze and who-knows-what-else he found to consume that day.

What killed Dean about it, what really made him want to rip his own heart out through his throat and hand it to Cas– shove it right into his chest so he could feel the torture he put upon Dean every damn day– was that it was all Dean's fault.

It all started on Dean's best day of 2010, which was also his worst.

The day began like any other: wake up, take a shot or two to get his mind up to par, shower under a hose where the water temperature and pressure felt more like being pissed on than getting clean, shave with his trusty straight blade, and meet everyone in the common dorm for a breakfast of whatever Chuck managed to forage together for them to eat that morning.

He was constantly surrounded by dozens of people in various walks of life, screaming children running around near locked and loaded AK-47s, elderly folk dealing elaborate drug trades and gambling schemes to which Dean turned a blind eye, teenage girls and boys who couldn't tell the periodic table of elements from a chessboard, but who could wield axes and crossbows and slingshots with deadly precision.

At his darkest moments, Dean realized that this wasn't the life he wanted for himself, but he always knew it would be the kind of life he ended up with.

Not surprisingly, he found little respite in inevitability.

Dean sat down at the head of a long table, having spooned some kind of gruel into a bowl, and shoveled it down his throat without tasting it. It was lukewarm and chunky, and developed a skin when untouched for more than a minute. He supposed at one point it could have been mistaken for oatmeal, but had since lost the moniker, having been heated and reheated potentially dozens of times by the time it got to his mouth.

Thankfully, Dean was bad enough along in his alcoholism that he really didn't need to eat that much to get by in a day.

He looked around for Cas at the long table, like he did every morning, but Cas was never there, opting instead to sleep in until two in the afternoon and then meditate for hours on end in a field somewhere, only inexplicably returning when someone brought up the idea of going for a pharmacy run.

Dean speculated that the rumors about the marijuana farm had something to do with Cas, too.

He managed to tune out most of the ruckus in the common area, but a frantic whining caught Dean's attention. "Have you seen him?" a woman asked a group of people further down the table.

They shook their heads.

She went to another group, and held out a small piece of paper Dean assumed was a picture. "His name is William. He's twelve. He has brown hair and brown eyes. He was wearing a red t-shirt."

The other group shook their heads and shrugged.

A clipboard– the bane of Dean's entire fucking existence– slammed down on the table next to him, breaking Dean from his concentration on the woman looking for William. "We have a problem," said the owner of the clipboard.

"I told you, Chuck," Dean began, "do not ask me questions before I finish breakfast."

Chuck took Dean's bowl and threw it against a wall. It splattered gruel everywhere and landed with a crash on the ground. Only a couple people raised their heads, this kind of behavior being relatively normal in their day-to-day lives.

Dean blinked, still holding his spoon, staring down at where his bowl of somewhat-food had been. Then he looked up at Chuck, and asked, flat and harsh, "What, Chuck. What is so goddamn important."

Chuck's eyes were wide, panic etched across his face which he hadn't shaved in several weeks. He was what Dean imagined God looked like, if God always looked like he was two seconds away from being hit by a bus.

His terrified expression did not faze Dean, who learned early on not to buy into Chuck's irrational panic at everything, from someone needing the Heimlich, to picking out the most flattering shade of red hair dye for Mrs. Anderson.

"We got a big pack of croats at the bottom of the hill," Chuck replied, clutching his clipboard until his knuckles turned white.

 _"Fuck."_ Dean ran a hand over his face and impulsively reached for the flask he carried in his breast pocket, hand automatically trembling, before clenching his fingers into a fist and slamming it on the table. "You got a squad ready?"

Chuck gestured to the door. "Yeah, they're outside in the truck."

The woman looking for William interrupted them, and forced the picture into Dean's hand. "Please, while you're out there, if you could look for him..." her voice was shaking, face puffy from tears. Dean didn't know her name, but he'd seen her around since the drunken reverie that was the entirety of the prior year.

Dean nodded once. "We'll look, but no promises."

"Thank you," she whispered as Chuck reached up and lay a soothing hand on her back.

He looked up at Dean, brow raised in an expression Dean could only read as, _"It's hopeless."_

Dean stood from his bench, stretching out his hand which had again reached for his flask, but stopped himself, instead grasping the small tin cup from the table and gulping down the sludgy remnants of his coffee. "All right," he said, taking a deep breath, "let's do this."

***

Dean could see the horde from the top of the hill with his binoculars. It was a moshpit of angry, bloody despair as creatures who used to be people fought each other and scoured for food, their once flourishing minds deteriorated by the virus, dissolving into raging, animalistic beasts hell-bent on nothing but survival and destruction.

When it came down to it, Dean wasn't all that different.

The only thing keeping him from a life of rampant, ceaseless slaughter was Castiel, who was off in his weed field introspecting on his soul or some other hippy guru nonsense.

It was for the best. Dean didn't want him mixed up in this shit anyway.

They drove to the bottom of the hill, taking out a handful of croats with the truck. Dean was with a big guy named Lou who never spoke, and a tough-as-nails ex-marine named Jennifer. They'd gone on a few runs before, and Dean thought they made a decent team. They followed Dean's orders precisely and efficiently, and for that, Dean was grateful.

Jennifer parked the truck in an empty spot on some flat land, and they got out, suiting up with guns and ammo from the truck bed.

After strapping himself with weapons, he looked ahead in his binoculars. On the street were a dozen or so croats he could see off the bat, and probably more inside or between buildings. "Okay, we're going to take out anything that moves, understand?"

He looked over at Lou and Jennifer. They nodded in unison.

"When the coast is clear, we're gonna do a quick sweep of each building for one block, no further. Potential recon mission, looking for a twelve year old boy, goes by William, brown hair, brown eyes, red t-shirt. If you see him, do not shoot.  Otherwise, this'll be a quick one-two punch, no muss, no fuss. Got it?"

They nodded again. Dean loved efficient soldiers.

"Roll out!" Dean shouted, lifting his guns and marching into the fray.

***

Dean liked to keep count of his kills when he went on missions.

By the time they reached the end of the street and cleared out the madness, Dean took down thirty of the bastards. There was a moment he was in a bind; they were coming at him from all sides, but Jennifer shouted, _"HIT THE DECK!"_ and unleashed a flurry of machine gun fire, taking out ten in one go.

Dean figured Jennifer probably won this round.

When the coast was finally clear, they did a brief sweep of each building in the small town, picking up a couple needed items in the process.

In what looked like a building that had been a tacky little jewelry store, Dean caught sight of a necklace hanging on a rack. It was a thin, black leather cord with a silver pendant hanging on it, a symbol that Dean thought he remembered being referred to as an Om. He took it off the rack and stuffed it in his breast pocket next to his flask.

 _"WINCHESTER!"_ Jennifer screamed from outside, astonishingly loud for such a small woman.

Dean ran outside to find Jennifer half a block down in front of an abandoned theater, waving him over. Lou, who was across the street, ran over too.

It was an old theater, the kind with a ticket booth in front. When Dean approached it, Jennifer nodded in the direction of the booth, and signaled for Dean to go in.

Revolver pointed ahead of him, Dean entered the theater and rounded into the back of the box office, throwing the door open and searching quickly around the small space.

He diverted his gaze down and found a little boy in a red t-shirt, crying over the body of...

Charlie Bradbury.

"I didn't mean to!" the boy shouted. "I got lost and, and she tried to save me but..." he hiccupped and sobbed.

Dean knelt down next to Charlie and checked for a pulse. There was a bruise on her forehead, and her face was slack.

Her pulse was faint, but it was there.

There was a rucksack next to them that Dean assumed was Charlie's, so he grunted, "Grab the bag and follow me," while he lifted Charlie from the ground, cradling her in his arms, and running out toward the truck.

When Dean made it outside to Jennifer and Lou, he asked, "Which doc is on duty?"

"Abernathy, sir," Jennifer replied.

"Good. Radio in and tell him we got a situation." Dean charged forward and lay Charlie as gently as possible in the truck bed, hopping in with her.

When no one got in the truck to drive them back, Dean stood up. "Let's go, guys."

Jennifer shook her head. "I don't think that's a good idea, sir."

"Why not?" He looked over the side of the truck to find Lou, pointing a gun at little William, who was still sobbing.

Dean jumped out of the truck and stood next to Jennifer, who gestured to William's arm and said, "We can't take him back to the compound, sir. Quarantine policy."

William had a gaping, bloody wound across his forearm.

Dean took a brisk step forward and bent down to get to his level, bunching the kid's shirt in his fist. "Did you get any of their blood in your wound?" he growled through clenched teeth.

William let out a wail.

"Tell me!" Dean shouted.

Shaking his head, between loud sobs, the boy said, "I'm sorry!" voice cracking. "My ball went past the fence and when I went to get it, I fell down the hill. Please don't tell my mom."

Dean swallowed, the blood draining out of his face, and willed his voice into an even tone, asking, _"Did... you... get... their blood... in your wound?"_

The boy hesitated, then nodded.

Dean stood up straight and covered his face in his hands, bile rising in his throat. He knew this day would come eventually. He knew that when Cas told him to be a leader, what he was really saying was that Dean would be the only one strong enough to do the dirty work when the time came.

That time was now.

Dean looked back to see Jennifer and Lou staring at him, faces etched in sorrow and horror. "Turn around," he told them quietly.

They did, and Dean pulled his revolver out from the small of his back.

***

Dean sat in the infirmary, the sturdiest of their buildings. It was just one room with tables around the perimeter covered in medical supplies that he and Chuck and others had collected on various runs. There was a stainless steel table in the middle that they had found in a commercial kitchen, and a bright light above it.

Charlie lay on it, unconscious, and Dean leaned against one of the tables, arms across his chest, as Dr. Abernathy inspected the large bruise on the side of her head.

The old man looked up at Dean and smiled, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. Abernathy was Dean's favorite doctor, because he didn't take bullshit and he didn't give it, either, and the dude always seemed chill with all the goings on in their fucked up little community.

Though, given his perpetually glazed-over expression, Dean supposed that could have something to do with Cas's weed farm.

"She'll be fine," he told Dean, taking off his latex gloves and tossing them in a trash can. "Just knocked out cold. When she comes to, she'll need food and water and probably some pain medicine, which I'm sure won't be difficult to get your hands on."

"You're not gonna tell me when she's going to wake up, or how much pain medicine to give her or anything? A cold compress?"

Abernathy shrugged. "She's alive. She'll likely continue being alive. Comfort isn't really a priority of mine in this world we now live in, Mr. Winchester."

"Right," Dean replied with a deep breath.

"Now if you'll excuse me," Abernathy continued, "I have an appointment with that... friend of yours."

When he left the room, Dean rolled his eyes, tired of everyone being stoned to shit all the goddamn time, and even more tired of everyone insinuating that he's in a relationship with Cas. He stared down at Charlie, gently running a hand through her hair, focusing on anything and everything outside of himself to keep from thinking about William. "It's gonna be okay," he mumbled, more to himself than Charlie, "You're here now. You're safe. Things are gonna be okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized after I wrote this chapter that Charlie isn't actually in the show until 2012, so lets just assume this is an alternate-alternate timeline wherein Dean and Charlie have been BFFs since they were kids.


	3. 2010, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Graphic depictions of hard drug use and the drastic consequences thereof, major character death in the form of a dream.
> 
> Jim is one of my beloved longstanding OCs (like Katarina, Hugo, and Ruby Red), but I haven't yet had the opportunity to introduce him. UNTIL NOW. You go, absurdly loyal true neutral weirdo. 
> 
> I have never done hard drugs. If there are inaccuracies, it's because all of my research is from the internet. 
> 
> I told you this was going to get dark.
> 
> Oh, and happy Croatoan Day.

_"I'm sorry, Sammy. You've been infected," Dean said, gun held to Sam's head._

_Sam, twelve years old, was crying silently, the blood from the gash on his wound matching his red t-shirt as it trailed down his hand and landed in a steadily growing puddle on the ground._

_The puddle grew so large that it swirled around him, and Sam began sinking, reaching for Dean, arms waving, hands grasping at Dean to save him. "Dean! Please!"_

_Dean couldn't reach him. Dean couldn't pull him out. Dean couldn't rescue him._

_But he could save Sam from the pain of being consumed. A mercy killing. Sweet relief._

_He leveled his gun to Sam's forehead, steadily sinking lower into the growing ocean of blood, face contorted in agony as he pleaded for Dean's help between frantic, desperate sobs._

_Dean pulled the trigger._

***

Dean jolted awake from the sensation of someone touching his shoulder.

He took a second to get his bearings, then trailed his eyes up the pale arm of Charlie Bradbury, crouching down in front of Dean, who had fallen asleep against a wall of the infirmary.

The bruise on her head was enormous, but she was smiling down at him regardless. "Hey."

Dean smiled up at her and said, "Hey."

She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him tight while Dean reached up to embrace her with matching fervor.

"I'm so glad I finally found you," she said, muffled in his shoulder.

"Me too," Dean replied, throat constricted.

She pulled away, holding him by the shoulders as she asked, "Where's William?"

Dean opened his mouth to reply, but all he could see was William's face, a second before his death. Then he saw Sam's face in the same moment, a scared abandoned child wanting nothing more than for his big brother to save him. Finally, he saw the image he'd been trying to push away for a year now: the sight of Sam's face, older, the moment he turned into Lucifer, all light behind his eyes dissipating, replaced with the ultimate darkness.

He couldn't save William.

He couldn't save Sam.

The only thing he was good for was destruction.

Before he knew what was happening, he had his face buried in Charlie's shoulder, wracking out quiet sobs he didn't know were still inside him, begging for her forgiveness.

She held him, shushing him as she kissed his head and rubbed his back. "I understand, Dean. You did what you had to do. I understand."

Dean shook his head, saying, "You _don't_ understand." He pulled away and looked up at her, face a mess of tears and remorse. "I _killed_ him, Charlie. I killed _a little boy_. Point blank. He just..." Dean heaved breaths, room spinning, lungs aching for air and never finding enough. "He wanted to find his ball. He didn't want me to tell his mom. He was so afraid, Charlie, and I just... I pulled the trigger..."

Charlie sat down next to him against the wall and held him tight, silent as Dean wept out the last of his conscience, the goodness within him finally breaking.

***

 _"PARTY AT THE TOWER!"_ someone yelled outside.

It was a warm night in late spring, and Dean had made it back to his tiny room to stare out the skylight he built into it while he drank himself into oblivion.

He watched the stars overhead, so many of them visible now that society had collapsed, slowly bringing the flask to his lips over and over again.

When he needed to refill, he reached under his bed and grabbed the bottle to drink from instead.

There was a soft knock at his door.

"C'min," Dean mumbled.

Chuck opened the door, poorly fit into the frame and already squeaking on its hinges. He popped his head into the room and asked, "We're throwing a party for Charlie at the watchtower. You wanna come?"

"No," Dean replied, terse.

There was a short pause, and Chuck added, "Cas'll be there."

 _"Fuck."_ Dean sighed, and ran a hand over his face, reluctant to babysit his graceless fucking angel as he partied to shit on the top of their only real means of protection. "Fine. I'll be right over."

***

Twenty minutes later, after washing his face, running a comb through his hair, and giving himself a once-over in the dusty, cracked mirror he kept above his personal armory, he was on his way up to the top of the hill to climb the watchtower.

They were lucky enough to have an architect in their midst, a douchebag named Jim who couldn't be paid to have an emotion beyond mild irritation. He drafted up all of their buildings, and the rest of the crew put them together using supplies stolen from hardware stores all over the city.

The watchtower was Jim's crowning achievement, and, despite Dean's general and immediate dislike of the man, he had to admit it was an impressive piece of work for such a ramshackle group of misfits. It looked a bit like a lighthouse without a light, the spiral staircase inside holding about fifty steps with a storage unit at the bottom that Jim used as a bedroom.

He was a snarky-looking kid, right out of college, disheveled blond hair and blue eyes and a smile that could melt the world on the rare occasion he smiled at all.

The top of the watchtower was one of the weirdest things Dean had ever seen upon completion. The damn thing had been his idea, but once it was built, everyone adopted it as party central for nightly shenanigans, celebrating anything and everything anyone had an excuse to celebrate.

That was the thing about the end of the world, Dean thought. It definitely brought out the party.

Dean climbed the stairs, bass reverberating in the wooden steps under his feet.

When he reached the top, the music was earsplitting, and a thick haze of smoke floated in the air. The ceiling was adorned with Christmas lights and all the windows were shut. The floor was covered in Persian rugs and beanbag chairs; throw pillows, bongs, booze bottles, and pipes littering the floor of the massive room.

There were people huddled against every wall and dark corner, some naked, some not. Some were in the throes of threesomes and orgies, some were sitting alone in their own drunken or drugged up reverie.

Dean found Charlie out on the deck, staring off into space.

"Hey," Dean said.

Without looking at him, she replied, "Hey."

"Seen Cas?" he asked.

Dean was thankful for Charlie's presence, but what he was most thankful for was that he didn't need to say anything to communicate with her. They went all the way back to what felt like the dawn of time, and spoke more in silence than with words.

She nodded her head toward the corner where the deck bent around the pentagram-shaped structure.

Dean walked around the side of the deck to find Cas, grinning maniacally down at Jim, a tiny baggie in his hand. "...You're sure I don't owe you anything?"

"Nah, just..." Jim said, reaching up to touch Cas's shoulder, smiling crookedly up at him. "Keep being you."

Dean stood there for a moment longer, looking between the two of them smiling in silence at each other.

He cleared his throat, and Cas was startled out of the moment, smile dropping as he spotted Dean. He straightened his spine and hid the baggie he'd been holding behind his back. "Dean, what are you doing here?"

Dean shrugged, taking a step toward them, shooting Jim a menacing glare before looking back to Cas. "Well, Cas, in case you've forgotten in your constant drugged-up stupor, I'm kinda the Big Kahuna around these parts." He stopped inches away from Cas, staring into his bright blue eyes, pupils dilated to the max.

He spared a glance over to Jim and jerked his head to the side. "Get out of here," he commanded with a snarl, then turned his attention back to Cas.

Jim scurried back into the main room of the watchtower.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Dean asked, flicking his eyes down to Cas's arm, still hidden behind his back.

"Having fun," Cas replied, voice flat. "Something you wouldn't understand."

Cas was wearing his dumb, white linen hippy shirt with the wide sleeves, Dean's favorite pair of jeans which he stole months ago and never gave back, and no shoes. Cas never wore shoes anymore, stating something about them being "foot coffins" and, _'It's important to get to know the earth the way it was intended to be known, Dean,'_ in his bitchy voice that Dean refused to admit was sexy as hell.

Dean was having a weird day. He killed a kid. He found his best friend. He caught Cas eye-fucking a pretty-boy architect. And now Cas had the audacity to accuse Dean of not knowing _fun._

He was tired of this shit. He was tired of being the fearless fucking leader, always having to be the responsible adult, always taking care of Cas and everybody else's ass at the compound. He wanted a break.

He _needed_ a break.

After the day he'd had, he certainly fucking deserved one.

The thing that broke in him earlier also happened to destroy every ounce of resolve he had toward keeping his physical distance from Cas.

"Oh, _I_ don't know how to have fun," Dean said, taking a step closer to Cas until he backed up into the railing, view all around them vast and dark, air thick and buzzing with the life of impending summertime. He stopped short of Cas's lips and murmured, "Trust me, Cas, I know fun," before closing the gap between them and placing a rough, frantic kiss on Cas's lips.

Cas kissed back like he was dying, like he'd been waiting for this, yearning for this since the last time their lips had met.

The thought made Dean's chest tight, which only deepened the kiss, saying all the words they had avoided saying for so long.

Cas tasted just like last time, except the quality of the weed he'd been smoking had drastically improved since he stopped outsourcing it.

Dean ran his hands through Cas's hair, damp with the sweat of the hot night, and trailed his hands down his body, feeling the soft, worn linen between his fingers. His hands stopped when they reached Cas's, which were still behind his body, fingers landing on the small baggie.

He pulled away and tugged it out of Cas's hands, bringing it up to look at.

It was a light brown powder.

Dean stared at it and shook his head, then glared at Cas. "Really, Cas? Really? This is what things have come to? What's your fucking problem, man?"

Cas snatched the bag out of Dean's hands and looked at it lovingly, possessively, like the drug held all the power in the world, all the power that Cas used to have but which had been stolen from him, ripped out of his soul, leaving it a shell of the man standing in front of Dean.

"I need it, Dean."

"No, you don't. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?" Dean asked, reaching out and lifting Cas's chin so that their gazes met.

"You don't understand, Dean. You'll never be able to understand. I'm... I'm powerless. I'm useless."

Dean leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on Cas's lips, pulling away slightly to whisper, "You're not, though. You're not hapless, and you're not hopeless, Cas."

Cas swallowed, staring up at Dean, searching his eyes, before whispering back, "Let's do it together."

Dean kissed him again, slow and deep, melting around Cas's lips. He steeled his resolve, pulled away, and nodded, brow furrowed. "Okay."

***

"Have you ever done this before?" Cas asked.

They were in Jim's bedroom, the tiny room under the stairs that was actually a closet with a mattress shoved inside it. Like the top of the watchtower, it had white Christmas tree lights hung around the ceiling, black and white pictures of old buildings tacked to the walls, a small table with a stack of paperback novels in the smallest corner, and pillows and blankets everywhere.

It had been Dean's idea to use Jim's room because, as he told Cas, " _Fuck_ that guy."

Cas had smirked, pausing in the kitchen as he cut a small square of tinfoil. "What if I have already?"

Dean sneered and pulled Cas into heated kiss, pressing his body against the stainless steel table, tempted to have his way with Cas right then and there.

Cas pushed him away. "Down, boy. We still need to find a toilet paper roll."

So, Dean reasoned, yes, they were going to get fucked up and then fuck each other in Jim's goddamn bedroom.

Dean stared at Cas as he opened the baggie, holding out the tinfoil in hand, cross-legged on the elaborate duvet in Jim's room. "You have _met_ me, right?"

Cas shrugged. "You just never seemed the druggie type."

"I'm not," Dean replied, pouring a careful amount of the powder on the foil. "At least, not anymore. But, you know, young punk, poor supervision, new school every couple months. I never fell in with the wrong crowd, I guess, because I _was_ the wrong crowd."

"Ah," Cas replied, watching Dean closely.

Dean handed the toilet paper roll and lighter to Cas. "First hit's all yours."

Cas huffed a laugh and gave him a crooked smile. "Such a gentleman."

After Cas's hit, Dean took one too, an immediate, intense wave of nostalgia hitting him.

He lost track of time after that, alternating between past and present, backward and forward, cocooned in the soft warm glow of Cas's soul as it– with long, careful, deft fingers like feathers on an expansive wing– lifted his shirt above his head, laying Dean down and covering his body with those lips like divinity consuming him.

It wasn't even a year ago that Cas was in a trench coat, waiting on the side of the road for Dean to get some sleep, that utterly human thing he could never understand, cell phone to his ear as he used that sexy, bitchy voice to tell Dean he was running out of minutes.

Castiel, the angel of the lord, used to seem so big, so enormous that Dean sometimes felt like he couldn't see him at all, like staring at the sun, that thing that makes everything go, everything live, everything die.

Dean was drowning in Cas's affections, quiet moans as Dean caressed him, soft skin over hard muscle, a gift given to Dean by God Himself, in the most literal sense of the term. Dean loved that he could see Cas now, no sun to burn his eyes. No overwhelming greatness. They stood on the same ground, green eyes staring into blue, the grass and the sea: earth, embraced, embracing, bracing for those fingers that wrapped around Dean's pulsing dick, gently pulling at him while Dean groaned into the crook of Cas's neck.

Dean felt beautiful. Dean felt loved. Dean felt God in that room with them, lack of grace be damned.

It was only two years ago that he first met Cas, not in that barn, not with the massive, shadowy wings, or the electronic devices shorting out.

He remembered the light in the darkness. The warmth in the cold. The feel of the loving touch of Cas's hands which gripped him tight and raised him from himself, which were now those same hands that worked him open, careful and euphoric and so full but begging for more, panting and whining and stuttering hips as Cas murmured patience on his skin, kissing burning marks of savior over his legs and stomach, savoring the feel of being taken apart and put back together by this angel now a man.

This angel was a man, this angel had fallen from the grace of God, but Dean still worshipped him. He was still Dean's light in the darkness, still Dean's warmth in the cold. He was the man, just a man, that Dean prayed to every night, one building over but separated by miles of soulful distance, waves in the air connecting them, breathing the same toxic reality but living on different planes.

They were together now, though, Cas pushing into Dean, filling him completely, the slow, steady burn replacing the burning in his chest, the burning of hell, the burning of himself, the embodiment of destruction and chaos being taken by the body of law and goodness, hovering over him, owning him in the way that Dean has always needed, to be bound, to be leashed, to be anchored.

Dean prayed to Cas now, his God, his light, his love, the only thing in his life that kept him on solid ground, tears rolling down his face as he thanked Cas in quiet moans and imminent expressions of sorrow for everything he'd ever done wrong, pleading and begging, gripping, grasping, kissing, touching his way to the absolution that he would never grant himself.

He continued to drown in his God's steady, undulating love, thrusting into him in waves, grazing that spot that brought stars to Dean's eyes and made him gasp, shout, choking on his own tongue, legs wrapped around His strong, lithe body which owned Dean, every ounce, every inch, every filthy speck of his being.

There was no one. There was nothing. There was emptiness beyond this moment in space and time. Everything was now. This was the big bang: the smallest moment and the largest. The singularity.

"You don't need your grace," Dean murmured against Cas's neck. "You are God."

"Do you love me, Dean?" Cas whispered, the ocean of blue falling over Dean as his breath and heart stopped, choking on the affection of his own words.

He shook his head, letting the dam of words in his throat loosen, spilling them out onto Him. "You _are_ love, Cas. You don't need mine."

"Yes, I do," Cas gasped with a hard flick of his hips. "I need you, Dean. I need to know you love me."

Cas stopped moving, resting, together in the closest way two people could ever be, relaxing in the fullness of infinity as one.

Dean reached up and trailed a finger over the bow of Cas's upper lip, across His eyebrows. He pulled Cas down and kissed each of His eyelids, the tip of His nose, the corner of His mouth. He thumbed over His sharp cheekbones and raked his fingers through His hair.

Cupping His face in his hands, Dean replied, soft yet stern, "What we have is beyond love, Castiel. It is everything there is, everything there was, everything that will ever be." He palmed a hand in the center of Cas's chest, feeling the heart beating steady inside it. "You are love, and _we_..." He reached up and kissed God, gentle and slow, then let go to exhale, "...are grace."

Cas moaned, deep and full of love, then thrust into Dean again.

***

Dean awoke with a start, mind completely blank but for a pounding _wrongness_ in his head and heart, stomach churning.

He sat up and looked around the tiny room.

Cas lay next to him, on his side, eyes closed.

He was pale. His lips were blue. He was barely breathing.

"Cas?" Dean asked, voice breaking, shaking him. "Cas, man, wake up. You gotta wake up."

He gripped Cas tight, but he couldn't save him. He couldn't raise him from perdition.


	4. 2011

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Subtitle for this chapter: "A Lesson in Post-Apocalyptic Meditation"
> 
> The last line of the verse that inspired this chapter I took with a bit of a religious interpretation.

_The third time, in the doorway_   
_Lights all on around us_   
_And the audience beside us_   
_And the old man watching from a tree_

***

Everything was different after the overdose. Dean had picked up Cas and rushed him to Abernathy's barrack, who had been smoking a joint on a lawn chair outside. Dean couldn't remember much about what happened after, except for laying Cas on the grass in front of him and holding his hand tight as the good doctor worked his magic, rocking back and forth and muttering something along the lines of, "Don't leave me, God. Don't you leave me again. Don't leave me in this hell alone."

Dean rarely stopped touching Cas after that night, rarely let him out of his sight. Dean was always with him, insisting he come with Dean everywhere he went. He was either holding Cas's hand or absently touching him in some way, terrified that if he let go for too long, he'd lose Cas again, and in this hellish reality, he just couldn't risk it.

Their fingers were intertwined more often than they weren't.

If Cas minded it, he didn't say anything. Dean wasn't even sure if Cas liked it. He couldn't read Cas at all anymore, like his ability to communicate emotion beyond literal words completely faded. For a long time, he was back to the same version of himself that Dean had first met all those years ago, but without the anger, without the ferocity, without the blind devotion that went along with being a warrior of God.

As far as Dean knew, Cas stayed away from the heavy shit after that, and so did Dean, which wasn't difficult because it was never his favorite thing anyway. He would choose the low, steady burn of constant drunkenness over extreme, euphoric highs any day. Dean would still occasionally catch Cas crushing up high doses of Adderall and snorting them. He still walked around with a shirt pocket full of carefully rolled joints. There was always one tucked behind his ear, ready to be smoked or already half-smoked, only a matter of minutes until Cas squeezed Dean's hand gently, indicating to let go, so he could pull the joint out from behind his ear and take another couple hits.

Dean made an effort, though, to fix things. He made an effort to be there for Cas in a more obvious way, no more tension-filled gazing, no more hidden acknowledgment of their affection for one another. He tried to be supportive of Cas, help him through this hard time, and– as hypocritical as it was– encourage him toward healthier pursuits.

Without putting a name on anything, he tried to be a good boyfriend.

He built Cas the equivalent of a mansion on their little compound, a large cabin for him to use as a yoga studio so he wouldn't have to wander away and find a potentially croat-filled meadow to practice the only healthy activity he had going for him.

Dean even furnished it with things he found that reminded him of Cas: Buddha statues and nice lamps, elaborate rugs and vintage steam trunks. He hauled in a king-size bed and covered it with obnoxiously high thread-count sheets and a fancy comforter from an abandoned Sears.

Dean couldn't hide the fact he was building a yoga studio for Cas, but he _could_ hide the fact that he decorated it, so the day it was finally finished, he guided Cas late in the afternoon on a crisp fall day sometime near Thanksgiving, hands covering Cas's eyes as they entered the room.

"Ready?" Dean asked, quiet and close to his ear, unable to help himself as he pressed a small kiss to the delicate skin of Cas's neck.

Cas flinched, ticklish there, and Dean reveled in the moment. It was the first time he'd seen Cas happy or excited about anything in a long time, and he was thrilled that he could give this to him, after everything they'd been through, after all the pain Dean caused him over the years.

"I'm ready," Cas said behind a rare smile.

Dean lowered his hands and watched Cas gaze around the room, warmed by a large space heater and lit by candles Dean took from a Pier One.

Cas rose a hand to his mouth as took a tentative step further into the room. He touched the glass shade of the small Tiffany lamp and the head of the Buddha statue, picked up the blue box of nag champa, smelled it, and set it back down again. He walked over to the bed and ran a hand over the ornate red comforter, staring at it in silence.

After several moments, he turned and looked over to Dean. "You did all of this... for me?"

Dean could feel the blush creeping up his face, and he looked down at his feet, replying, "Yeah."

Suddenly, strong arms wrapped around his shoulders, a stubbly face pressed into the crook of his neck that mumbled, "Thank you, Dean. I love it."

Cas pulled away and Dean remembered something. "One more thing," he said, reaching into his flask pocket to pull out the Om necklace he stole on the day of the overdose.

He didn't tell Cas that, though, thinking that he would find it to be a bad omen, but to Dean, it represented their survival. It was an acknowledgment that even though they were in a perpetual shit storm, they were still alive, and that's what was important.

It was a symbol of hope.

Cas took it from his hand, then thumbed over the silver pendant, and looked up at Dean. "Have you ever meditated?"

Dean scoffed.

"You know," Cas began, lifting the necklace and then lowering it over his head to settle in the V of his t-shirt, "the people who find it ridiculous are often the people who need it most."

That struck a chord with Dean. In any other situation, he would make a crass joke about the flexibility of hippie chicks and change the subject, but it was the end of the world, and there was really no reason to hold on to inane ideals anymore.

When Dean didn't reply, Cas stepped out of his shoes and sat down on the rug, folding his legs and lifting one above the other, then patted the floor in front of him. Smiling up at Dean, he said, "I'll show you. Consider it a thank you gift."

Dean didn't know how he got to the point in his life where he would do anything for Cas's smile, but that line had apparently been crossed months ago and there was no going back, so he shrugged out of his jacket and slipped off his shoes to sit across from Cas.

He settled down cross-legged, gesturing to Cas and noting, "I'm not flexible enough to do that... leg thing or whatever," patently avoiding the caveat of, _"You know, bow legs and all,"_ because it was one of the few things he was self-conscious about.

"The lotus position, Dean. And it's okay, you can sit just like that." Their knees were only a couple inches away from touching and an uncomfortable nagging feeling settled over Dean as he realized it had been too many minutes since he last touched Cas.

Cas managed to read his mind though, so he held out his hands for Dean to take.

Dean took them, a wave of relief washing over him as he felt the soft, warm, familiar hands in his own.

"I want you to sit up straight," Cas began, "close your eyes, and breathe."

Dean did, silent, thankful for the feel of Cas's palms under his fingers to steady him and keep him on solid ground, suddenly afraid that this endeavor would end in conjuring up too many memories he wanted to keep dormant.

"I want you to focus on your breath. Imagine a sphere at your center, and for every inhale, I want you to imagine that sphere expanding. For every exhale, imagine it contracting. Try to keep your mind on nothing but the sphere. If you find your attention going to other things, note it, and come back to the sphere.

"For example, if your face itches, don't scratch it, merely note 'itching, itching,' and bring your mind back to the sphere. If you begin thinking of your task list for tomorrow, note, 'wandering, wandering,' and bring your mind back to the sphere."

Dean opened one of his eyes and looked at Cas. "Is that it?"

Cas, eyes still closed, replied, "Yes. It's more difficult than you think, and requires practice to form an expertise around it. Once you have, supposedly you reach nirvana."

"Have you reached nirvana?"

Cas opened his eyes, the dull, weary, glazed-over blue that they adopted more often than not, and answered with an obvious, "No."

Dean nodded, solemn, and closed his eyes again.

After a moment, he opened them. "One more question."

Cas opened his eyes too, and looked at him with exasperation. "Yes?"

"What's the point of this?"

Closing his eyes again, Cas replied, "It teaches you to live in the moment. It teaches you that there is nothing beyond right here, right now. It teaches you happiness in the form of removing your desires, accepting your suffering, and appreciating life."

Dean wanted to reply, _"If I haven't learned that in thirty-two years of life and forty years of hell, there's no way sitting quietly for a while in a cabin in Kansas City after the zombie apocalypse is gonna help."_ Instead, Dean closed his eyes, reminded himself to be a good boyfriend, and imagined an expanding and contracting sphere.

 It only took about thirty seconds for Dean's mind to wander away from the sphere. He started thinking about how much Chuck was freaking out about their toilet paper shortage. Then he noted, _wandering, wandering,_ and brought himself back to the sphere.

Everything was quiet but for the low buzz of the space heater and a crow outside. _Listening, listening,_ Dean chanted, and brought himself back to the sphere.

The loving warmth of Cas's hands in his own brought a sweet, aching feeling to his heart, and he wanted to squeeze them, wanted to remind Cas that he was there with him, that they were okay. He wanted to show Cas his acceptance of his weird yet comparatively mild drug habit, and his support of the whole yoga hippie guru thing, and more than anything, he wanted to find a way to tell Cas how Dean couldn't live without him, how on the night of the heroin overdose, it didn't matter how high he was, he knew in those desperate moments when Cas's life was in the balance, that Dean would kill himself if Cas died. There would be nothing left for him on this planet. The only thing worth living for anymore was the love he had for his fallen angel.

 _Feeling, feeling,_ Dean noted, and brought himself back to the sphere.

This meditation thing was harder than he thought.

After an indeterminable amount of time, Cas squeezed Dean's hands and pulled him out of his trance.

Dean lifted his head and opened his eyes, gazing onto the smiling face of the man he loved so dearly, and for a moment that was actually an eternity, Dean felt happy.

***

Dean started sleeping next to Cas because the four hours of fitful sleep he got each night in his own room was too long away from him. It was never anything they spoke about. Every night, they would meditate, then crawl into bed together. Sometimes they would kiss, sometimes they wouldn't. They never had sex. Instead, they lay together, limbs tangled, fingers entwined, touching as much of each other as they possibly could, wrapped blessedly in the home of their embrace.

Dean started sleeping much better after that, the burning ache of the anxiety ripping at him whenever he was away from Cas dissipating into nothingness as he fell into longer and longer nights of peaceful, dreamless sleep.

Several months passed where everything was okay. Nothing was _good_ , but the meditation was really helping Dean develop a laser focus for tasks at hand. It dulled the sharp edges of his reality, made the absurdity of their situation seem normal, and more importantly, manageable. For the first time in his memory, Dean had a rope around his anger, his sadness, and his drinking problem. He was down to one flask a day. He even started lifting weights, and turned his tiny bunker into a makeshift gym.

Cas, on the other hand, continued teetering on the edge of psychosis with his increasing daily dosage of speed. He would develop short bouts of intense paranoia, convinced there was another angel in their midst scheming to overtake the compound. Dean assured him that was ridiculous, that all the angels were either locked away in heaven, or stuck on earth, graceless like Cas.

Cas would stare at Dean, wide-eyed and shaking in the cold winter evenings, muttering, "He's here. He's _here_ , Dean," and hit his own chest with his palm repeatedly. Dean would take Cas's hand and lay him down on their bed, wrap him in his arms and kiss his shoulders until he relaxed.

On the rare days that Cas was lucid and coherent, they would go to bed together and Dean would cup Cas's chin in his hand, pull him in for long, languid, deep kisses that were themselves a form of meditation. He would slide his hands up and down Cas's body, growing thinner each day, and when their kisses turned more heated, Dean would grind against Cas's hip, dip his hand into Cas's boxers, but every time, Cas would pull away, shake his head, and roll over.

Dean came to the conclusion that Cas just didn't feel the same way for Dean that Dean felt for Cas.

But he was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he took what he could get, even if that meant watching his ex-angel slowly deteriorate into mild insanity while Dean fell in love with the pieces that remained.

On a chilly early spring evening, Dean finished up his tactical planning and went to Cas's room for their nightly meditation and snuggling. When he walked through the beaded curtains, the room was dark. No candles were lit and the space heater hadn't been on in hours. "Cas?" Dean whispered into the darkness.

In the silence that followed, Dean heard a loud bass in the distance.

It had been a long time since either of them had gone to a watchtower party, but Dean would be willing to bet a handful of bullets and a dime bag of weed– which was what functioned as their makeshift currency these days– that Cas was at the party.

As Dean stormed up the hill to the tower, he wondered what the hell made tonight so special that Cas would ditch the only reprieve they had from the ridiculous torment of their lives.

Dean ran up the staircase and opened the door to the colorful glow of the Christmas lights in the tower. There was the usual haze of smoke, and the room was swelteringly hot, despite the sliding patio door being open.

Dean scanned the large room, gaze stopping abruptly at a scene in front of him he couldn't comprehend.

Cas was naked, on all fours, face buried in the pussy of a young woman Dean knew as Leann, while simultaneously getting fucked from behind by a woman with a giant black strap-on. Cas also had three fingers inside another woman who was making out with the woman Cas was going down on.

The worst part of the whole damn scene was that Jim was in a chair in a darkened corner, fully clothed but for his pants which were around his thighs, a man whose back was turned going to town on him as Jim watched Cas getting fucked. Jim never glanced down at the man sucking him off, just held his hand in the man's hair as he gazed in ecstasy at _Cas_ _getting fucked in the ass by a woman with a strap-on._

Meditation practices be damned, Dean boiled over with intense jealousy.

"Cas?" Dean growled out among the soft moans and gasps floating around the room.

Cas lifted his head from between Leann's legs and looked surprised for a split second before a devious smile crept across his face. His eyes were glazed over and a little bit mad, and Dean figured he was on something new, but didn't know what, and he was suddenly too terrified to leave, scared to let these people take care of Cas when he was in a state like this.

But he also couldn't _stay_ , because although it had been a long-ass time since he'd done this kind of thing, he was pretty sure one didn't just invite himself to join an orgy one accidentally happens upon.

It also didn't help that he was pissed off to hell about the whole damn situation.

Cas removed his fingers from the woman making out with Leann and gestured for her to come closer. When she did, Cas whispered something in her ear, then they both looked at Dean, and Cas continued whispering.

The woman stood up and sauntered toward Dean. She was petite and young and curvy, with wild blond curls and stark grey eyes.

When she approached Dean, she stood on her tip toes and kissed Dean lightly while she reached into his jacket and trailed her hands down his back over his t-shirt.

Dean could feel her large breasts press against his ribcage as he fought the urge to kiss her back, to touch her, to show this woman whose name he didn't even know the affection he'd been wanting to show Cas for months now.

The petty side of him wanted to see if he could make Cas as jealous as Dean felt. He wanted to hurt Cas for this, as horrible as it was. Cas had been stringing him along for months, convincing Dean he wasn't worth any affection beyond a few make-out sessions per week. It made Dean feel, for the first time, self-conscious and _ugly_. Cas was the first person to not _want_ Dean in his entire life.

Dean had finally convinced himself that maybe Cas was just asexual. Maybe he just didn't really like sex, that maybe the first time it happened, Cas was trying to manipulate Dean into being a leader; and the second because of the drugs.

Dean put so much effort in being the best boyfriend he could possibly be to Cas in their shitty little world, and now here he was, fucking multiple people– virtual strangers– and letting Jim, the slimy little weasel,  _watch_.

Maybe he'd already joined in, Dean thought. Maybe this wasn't a new thing for them. Maybe this had been going on for weeks or months or years. Maybe Cas had been fucking Jim this entire time and _that's_ why he wouldn't fuck Dean.

The small, warm mouth at the base of Dean's throat finally got the best of him, and he reached up to take her chin and lift her head up so he could dip down and kiss her in return.

This was something Dean knew. This was something he was good at. "What's your name?" he muttered onto her lips, slipping into his old persona like finding a box of keepsakes in an attic. It fit him like a glove, the Dean who could seduce with a single glance, who could read people just by the way they kissed, guessed what they liked and follow through. It was a game for him to be correct, to find the buttons of women and men he'd only met hours prior.

"Abby," she replied in a sweet, high voice.

Dean smiled onto her lips and repeated her name in a low drawl, then took her bottom lip between his teeth and tugged on it gently.

She let loose a tiny gasp, and Dean trailed his hands down her supple body, reaching between her legs and grazing her clit with his fingers.

She was still soaking wet from Cas fingering her, so Dean slipped a digit inside, relishing in the feel of her tight heat against his knuckles, her loose kisses as she panted into his mouth, moaning and writhing on him while clutching his hair in her hands.

"You like that?" Dean asked, loud enough for Cas to hear.

She nodded, letting out a breathy, "Yes."

Dean fondled her breast in his other hand, flicking her nipple with his thumb.

Another hand found his abdomen and pulled at the button of his jeans. He broke away from Abby to find an olive-skinned brunette with a fierce look in her eye unzip Dean's fly and kneel down, fitting herself between he and Abby as she pulled his pants down to his thighs and licked a quick stripe up the underside of his dick.

Dean gasped, and Abby gave him a sly smile, then sank down next to the other woman to lick at his cock.

Dean couldn't figure out where the other woman came from, because Cas was still going down on the same woman, now moaning into her cunt, and he was still being methodically taken apart by the woman with the strap-on.

To Dean's dismay, when he looked over at Jim, he was smiling at Dean, watching the new scene unfold in front of him.

The whole thing was hot and weird and left Dean feeling sad and angry, a stark contrast to what Dean thought his reaction would have been to two women sucking his dick.

Abby circled her tongue around the head of his cock and then sucked him down, while the other woman wrenched his pants down to his knees and lapped at his balls. Dean shut his eyes tight, running his hands through their hair, jaw clenched in pleasure and confusion at the myriad of emotion and sensations enveloping him.

He heard a loud shout, and Leann screamed, _"Fuck, oh my god, Cas!"_ before letting out a series of loud, pulsing moans.

When Dean opened his eyes again a few moments later, all he could see was the glassy blue of Castiel's eyes, staring at him with an indistinguishable expression over his face. His hair was wild, on end and messy, like the first time they met. His lips were wet and swollen, and his cheeks and chest were flushed. His cock was still rock hard and leaking, having apparently not yet been touched.

Dean wasn't sure how to react to Cas staring him in the face while two chicks went to town on him, but thankfully Abby took that moment to swallow him down all the way, the head of his cock hitting the back of her throat, and Dean's eyes fluttered closed while his jaw loosened at the sensation.

"Ladies," Cas began, "I apologize for interrupting, but if you would please excuse us for a moment, I have some words to exchange with our fearless leader."

Abby lifted off of Dean with one more long lick of his dick, and the other woman parted ways with a rough bite to his hip bone, making him gasp in surprise as a pleasant tingle followed in its wake.

He really needed to work harder on getting to know his fellow refugees.

When the women joined the remaining fray and Dean pulled up his pants, Cas grabbed Dean's arm and pulled him a few feet to the sliding door of the deck. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Dean gaped at him, and replied in a harsh whisper, "What the hell is wrong with _me?_ You're the one having an orgy while some drugged-up pervert watches!" They were still close to the goings on of the orgy, but no one could hear them above the loud music reverberating through the tower.

"Dean, think about this from my perspective. You follow me around everywhere. You look at me like I'm dying. You are _suffocating me._ I finally escape for a night of fun and freedom, and you dare condemn my behavior? I'm not a child, I'm not made of porcelain, and _I am not your possession."_

Dean couldn't believe this was happening. Things were going so _well_ that Dean didn't even question it. His heart ached in his chest, and he took a deep breath before asking, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Cas ran a hand over his face. "Do you have any idea how difficult you are to talk to, Dean?" He sighed, and added, "And... it's more than just that. I wanted you to keep having this apple pie dream of yours, that we were together and playing house. But the fact is, the world is shit, and I just want to live while I can. My life is short now, Dean, and I want to burn as bright as I can because I won't be burning long."

Dean shook his head in disbelief. "So, what? You bury yourself in women and decadence? Bang a few gongs before the lights go out? Is that how you roll now, Cas? Not giving a fuck about anyone but yourself and those pathetic highs you chase every damn day instead of lifting a finger for this fucking community?"

Cas remained silent for a moment, then nodded, and replied, "Yeah."

Dean stared at him, wide-eyed. "Fine. You want fun? You want decadence? You wanna bang a few gongs?" He stepped closer to Cas and grabbed him by the back of the neck, then pulled him in for a ferocious kiss.

Cas ran his hands up and bunched Dean's shirt in his fists, pulling him closer.

The kiss was hot and desperate. Cas tasted like pussy and _fuck_ was that hot for all the wrong reasons.

Dean pulled away and grumbled, "Can't fuck me in bed, but you want me to fuck you here? In front of all these people watching? You want me to take you right now?"

Cas moaned and nodded, letting out a small, "Uh huh."

Taking him by the arm, Dean spun him around and pressed his chest against the doorjamb. He reached down and shoved a finger in his ass, still slick and wide open from being fucked recently.

Dean pulled his dick out of his pants, still slick from Abby's mouth and rubbed it up and down Cas's ass, grazing his hole with each thrust but not dipping in.

Cas squirmed, hips stuttering, fucking into air as he whimpered, forehead pressed against the doorway, arms above his head to steady him.

"Nuh uh, baby, you gotta watch them watching us. That's what you want, right? To be put on public display so that everyone can see how much _fun_ you're having? So that everyone hear you bang that gong?"

 _"Fuck,"_ Cas replied, then lifted his head to look at their audience, all of whom had stopped their own activities to watch the spectacle in front of them.

When Cas nodded, Dean breached his entrance, and as he slowly bottomed out, he leaned in and brushed Cas's ear with his lips, whispering, "No use in burning bright if no one can see the flame."

Cas groaned in response, and Dean grabbed his hips, pulling out and slamming back into him. A part of him was singeing at the edges at the idea of an audience of a half a dozen people, enrapt in their observance of Dean fucking into Cas with abandon. The other part of him felt dead inside, getting no satisfaction from this whatsoever, because the Cas whom Dean loved was the one who held his hands every night as they breathed together, living single, blissful moments that lasted for eternity apiece, creating their own space in their own little world that was so much better than everything else.

The Cas in front of him right now, back glistening with sweat despite the cool air surrounding them, gasping and moaning Dean's name as he grinded against the door frame, was a person Dean didn't even know. He was controlled by his addictions, his need for constant, immediate gratification and nothing else, taking the concept of _present_ in the worst possible way.

Dean lifted a hand and ran his fingers through Cas's hair, pulling back and exposing his throat. He leaned down and sucked marks onto Cas's neck, pulling the flesh between his teeth and bruising it with rough kisses so that tomorrow, everyone would know that Cas belonged to _Dean._

He took his other hand and ran it up and down Cas's ass as he fucked into him, then lifted it high and brought it down with a crack, stinging his fingers.

Cas let out a wail and fucked the wall harder. Dean switched hands, then bit into the back of Cas's shoulder, lifting his hand again to spank his other cheek, looking down at the bright red marks his fingers left in their wake.

"Dean," Cas whined, "I'm gonna..."

Dean reached around and grabbed the base of Cas's dick. "No, you're not. I'm not done with you."

He pumped into Cas with slow, steady thrusts, feeling Cas tremble beneath him with the need to come, then he switched his angle and pounded into his prostate.

Cas screamed so loud, Dean was sure it would attract croats, so he used his other hand to cover Cas's mouth and fuck into his prostate again and again.

Cas continued wailing into his hand, holding onto the doorjamb for dear life. When he started gasping into Dean's palm instead of screaming, Dean let go of the base of his cock and started pumping him in his fist, letting the cum steadily pooling out of him slick down his shaft. He jerked him in time with his own thrusts, which were increasing in pace and becoming erratic as the hot coil built up in the pit of his stomach.

He held Cas tight to him as he continued grinding into him, carefully timing his gradual climb with Cas's by feel of the tension coursing through his body.

This is what Dean was good at. Not being a good boyfriend, apparently, but he could do this for Cas. He could put on that old mask of the anonymous, meaningless, pretty-faced lay and give his ex-angel exactly what everyone else wanted out of him: his body and the pleasure and protection it provided.

No one wanted his heart, which, he figured, was okay.

Because he was beginning to think he didn't have one to give.

Dean thumbed over the head of Cas's cock while simultaneously pressing against his sweet spot, and that was all it took for Cas to come over his hand, hot streaks coating his fist, biting down on the other one still secured over his mouth.

As Cas's ass clenched down around Dean's dick, Dean let go of all of his emotions and thought back to the sphere, noted, _fucking, fucking,_ and concentrated on the feeling of the tight heat surrounding his dick, the boiling tension coursing through his veins, and then he remembered the smile on Cas's face when he gave him the Om, which pushed him over the edge, and he came, hard and fast, orgasm pulled from his body in intense waves as he continued stuttering his hips into Cas.

Cas melted in his grasp, going completely limp, but Dean caught him and held him close while they exhaled ragged, uneven breaths.

Dean rested his head on Cas's shoulder and gently pulled out of him.

Their audience started clapping and cat-calling at them, and Cas laughed, a manic, high-pitched sound that Dean felt in his chest, which Cas was still pressed against.

Dean spun him around and leaned him against the doorjamb. Cas slowly slid down it and hit the ground with a thump, still panting and grinning, gaze glossy and blissed-out.

He looked up at Dean and said, "Thanks. That was fun."

Dean sneered in response, and shoved his dick back in his pants, then buttoned himself up and fled the watchtower, running down the hill to his own damn room to find his bottle of whiskey and drink himself into oblivion.


	5. 2012, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gather round, everyone! It's story time! Today we're going to learn all about New Years Eve, 2011, or: The Night that Betty Almost Died.

_Fourth time, I said that's it_   
_You've agreed to give me everything_   
_Now I've got to ask you one thing_   
_Keep doing that forever_

***

The month following the orgy went by in a drunken haze, the heat of summer a blissful, sweltering suffocation from the frozen affections of winter.

Dean didn't speak to Cas if he could help it. They didn't hold hands or touch at all, and they barely made eye contact. The few times Dean saw him around, Cas was always with Jim, enrapt in conversation, Jim speaking animatedly while Cas listened in wonder.

Whenever this happened, Dean went somewhere else.

He spent most of the time in his own little cabin, holding his bottle of whiskey in much the way he used to hold Cas.

The worst part of the whole situation was that Cas never came to check on him, not once. Dean was publicly deteriorating into nothingness, and Cas just watched it from afar, always high as a kite.

Sometimes, on his worst nights, an image would flit through Dean's mind of Cas and Jim, in the cabin Dean built, sitting across from one another and meditating, then fucking on _their_ bed. Dean would pummel his fist repeatedly into the wooden wall by his bed until his knuckles were bruised and bloodied.

 _Punching, punching_ , he would chant to himself while imagining his sphere which had gradually turned into the shape of a translucent heart, shriveled and destroyed, beating in unison with his fists.

After the first few times he'd done it, there was a dark red stain permanently etched on the wall.

A month of drowning in booze and silent tears later, Dean finally wrapped up his knuckles, took a deep breath and the last long pull from his bottle, and went to find Cas.

Sure, he was shit-faced, and sure, he was still angry as fuck, and hurt, and confused, but if he didn't get it over with, he'd jump off the deep end. The tiny spark that was still ignited inside of him wouldn't let him go down without a fight.

He stumbled the quarter mile over to Cas's cabin and raised his hand to knock on the... Cas took down the door during the summertime, so Dean rattled the bead curtain instead.

It was dark inside, but Dean could see movement under the covers, and Jim lifted his head to mumble in his nasally, obnoxious voice, "I'm all out. Come back after the next pharm run."

Dean impulsively reached for the gun at his back, but chose instead to crack his knuckles, feeling the blissful pain of the ace bandage pressing into his open wounds.

 _Raging, raging,_ he noted to himself, and tried as hard as he could to imagine the sphere, the heart, any calming imagery to keep him from killing _yet another_ person in cold blood.

The others were innocent but infected, Dean reasoned. Jim was guilty but pure.

It would be no different than killing an infected, in the grand balance of Dean's homicidal track record.

If one included his tenure in Hell, then really, killing Jim would be downright _tame_ by comparison.

Dean barreled through the bead curtains into the dark room and stumbled to the bed, where he wrenched Jim by his hair off the mattress, until he fell out of it and onto the rug, face contorted in pain and fighting against Dean's grasp.

Cas shot out of bed. "What the _fuck_ are you doing, Dean?!"

Dean pushed Jim to the ground and straddled him, lifting his fist, bandage seeping with blood, and brought it down across Jim's face with a crack.

Jim cried out and covered his head with his arms.

Through clenched teeth, Dean growled, "Next invasion, I'm gonna throw you down this hill and let the croats have at you, you filthy drug-dealing little _prick_ ," and pulled Jim's hands away to bring his fist down again.

Jim's head hit the floor and bounced, but when Dean lifted his arm to punch him again, Cas grabbed it at the wrist and held it in a strong, firm grip, showing a display of authority Dean hadn't felt from Cas since before he fell.

"Stop this right now, Dean, or so help me you will regret it," he threatened in a voice Dean hadn't heard in years. For a moment, Dean was taken back to 2008, back to Bobby's kitchen when Cas told him, _"You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of hell. I can throw you back in."_

Dean looked up at him, surprised to see present-day Cas behind the wavering flood in his own eyes, wearing a pair of hemp pants and nothing else, no rumpled suit or backwards tie, no trench coat. Dean's face was wet with tears he didn't remember shedding when he shouted, "I regret _everything_! _Everything!_ There's nothing you can do to me anymore! You've taken all there is to take! I'm empty, Cas..." His shoulders slumped, and he repeated, distant, quiet, voice cracking, "Empty."

After the smallest of hesitations, Cas, looming above him, voice soft and expression stoic, commanded, "Let him go, Dean. He's not worth the tally mark on your wall of kills."

Dean finally lowered his fist and clambered off of Jim, who grabbed his shirt from the steam trunk and ran out the door, hand over his eye and not looking back.

Dean slumped over in a drunken heap on the ground, across the space where they used to meditate. He stared at Cas sideways, feeling the warm trickle of another tear fall over the bridge of his nose.

"Stop crying, Dean," Cas said with a clip in his tone. There was no affection behind his words. They were flat, distant, cold.

"I'm not crying," Dean grumbled, curling further into himself.

It was pathetic, but he craved Cas's touch so desperately that he hoped an ounce of pity would be taken on him, and Cas would feel compelled to console him in his time of need, that maybe Cas would set aside whatever was happening between them for a moment and lay a hand on Dean, assure him that even when there was nothing else, they still had the same care for each other they'd always had, that rope spanning between them, tying them together, from the moment Cas lifted Dean from hell.

Instead, Cas stood there, staring at Dean with two parts apathy and one part mild irritation.

"Why are you with him?" Dean asked, voice as small as it was when his father used to yell at him.

"I'm not with him," Cas replied.

"Why were you _in bed_ with him?" The missing word _'our'_ hung in the air between them.

Cas sat down on the steam trunk, elbows on his knees, and sighed. "I know you've taken a lot of hits to the head in your life, Dean, but I didn't think you were that dense."

Dean sat up and wiped his face with the back of his hand, trying to figure out what he missed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Cas began, meeting Dean's gaze. His eyes were glassed over, pupils wide. "I let him fuck me for blow. Otherwise, I can't stand him."

So many emotions hit Dean at once that he forgot to breathe: relief that Cas wasn't in love with another man, anger that Cas was selling his body for coke, disappointment that Cas got addicted to something new and Dean didn't even know.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Dean asked, soft, pulling his knees to his chest.

Cas shook his head. "Are you fucking kidding me, Dean? And have you look at me with that sad, disappointed stare some more? It's none of your goddamn business what I do or with whom I do it. I've lived millenia serving my Father, I don't need another holier-than-thou jackass breathing down my neck telling me about my rebellious, damaging behavior."

The anger coursing through Dean's veins won out, so he stood, staring down at Cas who wouldn't look up at him in turn. He paused, brow furrowed, putting all the pieces together. "So let me get this straight. You forced me to spend the past month, alone, drinking myself stupid, so that you could get fucked by a scumbag architect just so you could afford blow?"

"Fuck you. I didn't force you to do anything." Cas stood too, stepping into Dean's personal space, glaring into him with wild eyes. "I didn't ask for any of this, Dean. "

Dean scoffed, "You didn't _ask_? What, did Mr. Bug-eyed Bimbo put it up your nose while you slept?"

Dragging a hand over his face, Cas replied, "I'm trying to live in the momen–"

"The hell you are!" Dean interrupted. "This ain't living, man, not for you, not for any of us. This is what's called _getting by_ , and you're fucking failing at it. You're not _living_ , Cas." He shook his head, and added, "You're killing yourself."

Cas swallowed and looked away. "It's like the meditation. It's all about the _present_."

Dean stepped even closer into his space, and Cas stepped back, knees hitting the steam trunk. "You got it all wrong, man. That thing that we do? The thinking and the breathing and the sphere? _That_ is the present. Getting high every minute of every day? That's distraction. You taught me all this shit, Cas, about this hippie guru nonsense, and you can't even fucking see it yourself. It's about getting to the bare bones. It's about taking what you have and running with it. It's about not _wanting_ to get high. It's about not _wanting_ anything. But all I see in you is addiction and greed."

"Oh, like you're any better? Your distraction isn't alcohol, Dean," Cas said, pushing Dean away from him, forcing him to stumble backward. "It's _me._ You're fucking _using_ me for your own little games. No more _Sam_ to take care of, so you just _have_ to play overbearing caretaker to _someone_ , so why not Cas, with the addiction problems and the mania and the psychosis? No more _Impala_ , so you just _have_ to have your hands in _something_ , always fixing _something_ because you can never fucking fix yourself. You're just as broken as I am, Dean, so don't put your Daddy issues on me."

Dean surged forward and shoved Cas in turn, who stumbled over the steam trunk and caught his balance at the last moment. Through gritted teeth, Dean growled, "Don't you _dare_ bring Sammy into this."

"Bring him into this?" Cas asked, incredulous. "Dean, he never _left_. He's at the front of your mind every minute of every day, torturing you worse than Hell did. _You_ are torturing yourself worse than Hell did. No one else. This is all on you."

"The _fuck_ it's on me. _He's_ the one who said yes to Lucifer. _I'm_ the one who held out. For _you_ , Cas. When the time came for me to put in my vote for Michael or the goddamn apocalypse, I chose this." A painful bubble rose in his throat, and tears welled up in his eyes as he concluded, shoving a finger into Cas's chest, "I chose _you_."

Cas sneered in response. "Well you fucking _shouldn't have_ , because you would be much happier with Michael than with me."

Brow furrowing, Dean asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Cas took another step toward Dean until they were mere inches apart, and searched his face, before answering quietly, "It _means_ , Dean, that I'm not worth the apocalypse. I'm not worth you drinking yourself to death. I'm not worth this cabin you built..." He pulled the Om out from under his shirt and lifted it toward Dean. "...or this necklace I never take off." He dropped it back down to his chest, and bunched Dean's shirt in his fists. His eyes were rimmed with red from something other than the drugs, and tears flooded them. "I'm not worth your petulant little stares, or those small little smiles you don't give anyone else, or the way you always put your thumb on top when we're holding hands so that mine doesn't get cold." A tear ran down his face and his chin trembled. "I'm not worth any of that, Dean, because I'm not anything at all. _I don't exist_. I'm not _real_." A shuddered breath escaped him as tears streamed down his face. "I failed, Dean. I failed you, I failed my Father, I failed my brethren, I failed myself. And now I'm facing those consequences, but I can't properly wallow in my own hell when you wake me up every morning by kissing my neck and telling me how much you love me."

Dean couldn't help it anymore. He couldn't hold back his own tears and he couldn't hold back his hands, which reached forward to pull Cas into his chest. "You can't ask me not to feel this way, Cas," he murmured into Cas's neck. "You can't ask me to give up the one thing holding me together just so you can have your existential pity-party." After a long moment, he pulled Cas away and held him by the shoulders, then stared him in the eyes, concluding, "You're destroying me so that you can destroy yourself."

Cas swallowed and took a step back, out of Dean's grasp. Without breaking his gaze, his face hardened into its usual mask of indifference. The tears stopped, and Cas took a deep breath, then replied, "Yes, Dean, that's exactly what I'm doing."

***

Months passed in a dark haze of pain and remorse. The sweltering heat turned into blistering cold and the world kept going around the sun, as much as Dean didn't want it to.

Dean woke up every day, drank a fifth, did his civic duty to protect the uninfected citizens of their little community, and then drank himself to sleep, night after night.

Cas never spoke to him, never looked at him, never showed an ounce of compassion or regret toward his decision to fuck with Dean's head and then throw him to the wolves.

Dean was holding on by a thread, and no one knew. No one cared.

The only time Dean ever felt okay, ever felt in control, was when there were invasions, or when they went on a run where they got overrun with croats. Dean took delight in the violence, in the bloodshed, in the chaos of death surrounding him.

Dean was becoming apathetic to the concept of death at all. People would wander onto their camp, seeking food and water and shelter, families where one member had a bloody gash, or maybe all of them did. Sometimes someone would get cut up on a run, and Dean learned not to take any risks, having accidentally let an infected person in after a particularly violent shuffle.

He learned not to blink as he stared into the lights of their eyes, desperate and frantic and scared, then he pulled the trigger, and watched the light fade away.

He became envious of the dead.

On some days, the quiet ones, Chuck would have the genuine misfortune of sticking his head in Dean's door to ask a question, and the whiskey bottle would only have a shot left in it, so Dean would sacrifice it in order to throw it at him, glass shattering against the squeaky, crooked door as Chuck slammed it behind him and ran back to the common area.

One day in the middle of winter, he heard a light knock at his door.

"I swear to god, Chuck, I won't miss this time!" Dean yelled, sprawled over his bed, half-naked and body sore from how little he'd moved in the past twelve to thirty-six hours. Dean wasn't sure about things like time anymore.

His door opened and Dean lifted the bottle to throw until he caught sight of bright red hair at the corner of his eyes.

"Whoa!" Charlie exclaimed, raising her hands to cover her face. "Hold your fire! I don't have a clipboard and I'm not going to ask about toilet paper."

Dean dropped his arm and the bottle fell from his grasp, rolling under the bed. "Hey, Charlie," he mumbled, face half-buried in the pillow, rubbing against the grain of his beard which he hadn't shaved in weeks.

"Fuck, Dean, it's freezing in here and you're not wearing anything. Don't you have a blanket?" Charlie sat down on Dean's press bench, dusty in its abandonment.

"Don't need a blanket. Not cold."

"Jesus," Charlie exhaled. "How much booze is in your system?"

"All of it," Dean slurred.

A silence fell between them and Dean momentarily dozed out of consciousness, before coming to and asking, "What d'you want?"

"I just wanted to see how you were doing."

"Great," Dean replied, lifting his arm to give her a wobbly thumbs-up.

Charlie sighed. "It's New Years, Dean. There's a party at the watchtower. I think you should come."

"Why?"

Charlie toed Dean's hand, resting on the floor, with her shoe, and said, "Because I want to hang out with you. I miss you. It's the apocalypse, man. All we have is each other."

Were Dean capable of rolling his eyes, he would have.

No one had him, and he had no one.

"Not going," Dean replied, and rolled over so that he was curled up against the wall, forehead pressed against the dark red stain of his rage.

He heard shifting behind him, then a dip in the mattress, and Charlie's small body wrapped around his, her arm over his waist, forehead pressed against his bare shoulder as she held him in comforting silence.

As it turned out, Dean _was_ cold.

The problem had been that he forgot what warmth felt like at all.

***

A few hours later, Dean was showered, shaved, and at the top of the watchtower taking shots of absinthe with a bunch of people whose names he barely knew.

Cas was at the party too, huddled in a corner making out with Jim and, Dean suspected, giving him a handjob.

But Dean didn't care. Cas was out of his life now and all that was left was his obligation to lead all these drunken assholes to survival, and drink the bright green absinthe sloshing around inside the red plastic cup in his hands.

He took another sip, feeling legitimately trashed for the first time in a long time, and when the cup left his vision, his eyes met with a brunette, olive-skinned woman he vaguely remembered.

"Hey," Dean said. "I know you. You sucked my dick that one time."

She laughed. "Yes I did. I'm so glad I left an impression." She stepped closer and closer to Dean, until he was backed into one of the corners of the hexagon-shaped room.

"Whasyer name?" Dean slurred, trying to merge her two heads into one by closing one of his eyes.

She laughed again, a light, lilting noise that fell over her lips as she looked at Dean with what he could only surmise as predatory intent. "Risa."

"Hey, Risa," Dean replied with a smile, "I'm De–"

"Dean," Risa interrupted. "I know. Not only have I sucked your dick before, I happen to have it on good authority that you actually run this entire compound."

"Oh? News to me." Dean was proud of how fucking clever he was, even when he was drunk. His sense of humor was something Cas never fully appreciated about him, and Dean had a _great_ sense of humor.

He could tell because Risa smiled and stepped into his space, trailing a long, thin hand up his chest.

"Whatcha _doin'_?" Dean asked, looking at her hand– or hands, maybe– and closing one of his eyes again so that the multiple layers of everything would go back to normal.

" _Nothin'_ ," Risa replied, playful, trailing her fingers up Dean's neck and into his hair.

Dean hoped to hell that Cas was watching this, but he couldn't risk a glance to check. That would ruin the whole operation.

Risa stood on her toes and planted a gentle kiss on Dean's lips.

Dean kissed back, immediately pressing Risa's body against his and parting her lips with his tongue.

It felt _amazing_ to be touched, to be wanted, to feel a body against his, warm and firm and hungry just like him.

It was unfortunate, however, that this woman lacked any rough stubble. She didn't smell like patchouli and nag champa. She didn't bite the side of Dean's upper lip in a maneuver that Dean could never figure out how to replicate. She didn't scrape Dean's tongue and bottom lip with her teeth or let loose deep, quiet moans, hot breaths onto Dean's skin. She didn't take Dean's face in her strong, rough hands and trail them everywhere on Dean's body they could reach, always wanting to touch more, take more, consume Dean wholly because Cas never got enough.

Dean was never enough for Cas.

A familiar discomfort grew in the pit of his stomach, and he pulled away with a terse, "Excuse me for a moment," then ran out onto the deck, shoving people aside, and leaned over the railing, vomiting so hard he thought the inertia might toss him over.

He rested his head on his arm, gasping for breath, ignoring all the people staring at him.

When he caught his breath, he stood up straight, walked past Risa, who was glaring at him half-concerned and half-offended, and stumbled down the spiral staircase two at a time, until he missed a step and thundered down half the staircase, landing at the bottom with thud, cracking his head on the ground.

He lay there, dazed, staring up at the spiral staircase, as it spun rapidly like a funhouse. His gut wrenched again, and he rolled over to crawl out of the building, making it to the frozen grass where he vomited so hard he couldn't breathe.

Dean had been puke-worthy drunk plenty of times in his life, but this felt so much different. His head ached and there was this burning fire in the pit of his stomach, begging to get out, like a demon being exorcised.

All that crossed his mind were memories of Cas, that first year here when Dean sat with him as he vomited up his chemical experiments.

He thought about Sam and the first drunken high school party he'd ever gone to. Dean had to pick him up at midnight because Sam drank too much cooking sherry, and Dean sat with him in the bathroom, taking pictures of his brother hurling his guts out with the disposable camera he used to keep in his jacket pocket all the time for just such hilarious occasions.

He thought about his alcoholic father, the retching noises in tiny motel bathrooms which Dean and Sam pretended to sleep through. The late nights where his father would sob and scream and beg for mercy, beg for Mary, beg for the tiniest amount of relief in his wretched little world.

Dean rolled over and puked again around a choked sob. Tears ran down his face from the painful force of his convulsions, like being cleansed of everything he'd kept bottled up for so long.

He missed Cas. He missed Sam. He missed his father.

He was alone.

"Dean?" a voice called from above.

Dean rolled over and looked up, blinking slowly. "God?"

He could barely see through his vision, blurry with intoxication and tears, but he thought he saw Cas's face staring down at him from the deck of the tower above.

"Close enough," he muttered to himself.

"Are you okay?" Cas called down.

Dean didn't answer. It was a drunken hallucination. He'd had a lot of those over the past few months: lucid, vivid daydreams of Cas coming into his bunker and holding him. Cas dragging him out into the meadow and making love to him under the stars. Cas kissing the shell of his ear as he told him stories about building the earth, sharing in each other's remorse at seeing what finally became of it.

After a few moments, or maybe a few hours, rough, strong hands pushed him into a sitting position.

"What the hell happened?" a gruff voice said as someone dabbed at his face with a warm cloth.

It felt good, and Dean sank into the touch, even though it couldn't have possibly been real.

"Thanks, angel," Dean mumbled, falling onto the strong, familiar chest of his precious daydream.

The muscles holding him up tensed. "I'm not an angel, Dean."

"Right," Dean said. "Forgot. You upgraded. You're God."

The voice sighed. "Not this again. Dean, you can't put me on that kind of pedestal. I'm not an angel, I'm not God. I'm barely even a human being."

Dean nuzzled the soft cotton of God's t-shirt, relishing in the warm skin underneath it, and curling into the woolen coat wrapped around his shoulders. "You're _my_ human being."

"I'm not that, eith–"

Dean sat up to turn away and vomit again, this time screaming with the effort, falling forward and crashing onto the ground, writhing in pain.

Every nerve in his body was suddenly on fire, but he was cold. He was so, so cold, down to his core but for the flames lapping at his insides.

"What's happening to me?" he asked, panicked. "This has never happened before."

Fingers threaded in his hair. "I don't know, Dean. I don't know what you've been doing."

In a brief moment of clarity, Dean looked up. Cas stared down at him with the tiniest amount of concern etched across his features. A tidal wave of relief washed over Dean. Cas was really here, really helping him, really touching him. "Cas?"

Cas smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "That moniker is accurate, yes."

Another wave of agony pulsed through Dean and he shrieked, rolling over on his side to gag on dry heaves. He sobbed and convulsed through the poison eating its way through his body.

When they stopped momentarily, he rolled back over and grabbed Cas by the shirt, dragging him down, and pleading, "Kill me, Cas." He searched Cas's face, desperate and frantic and pathetic. "You gotta kill me, man. I can't live like this anymore."

"Dean, I'm not going to kill y–"

"If you don't kill me, Cas, I swear to god I'll do it as soon as I can aim a gun steady. I'm gonna find you, and I'm gonna lift that gun to my temple, and I'm gonna make you watch me pull the fucking trigger, I swear to g–"

Dean rolled over and retched again, more sputtering and dry heaving, except this time, the only thing coming out of his body was thin lines of blood and bile.

Between heaves, Dean screamed, _"KILL ME!_ I'll do it if you don't! I swear, Cas, I'm gonna kill myself!" More convulsions, more blood, more screaming. _"THIS IS YOUR FAULT. YOU DID THIS TO ME, CASTIEL. YOU MADE ME LIKE THIS."_

Dean caught his breath and sobbed, forehead resting on his arm, face in the grass, mumbling incoherent strings of, "God, I miss you so much, Cas. I miss Sam. I miss dad. Why? _WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY."_ He beat the ground with his fist so hard that he felt his pinky finger snap.

He couldn't feel the pain of it, though. The blinding agony coursing through him was the only feeling left, an eternity of sorrow and regret and absolute torture.

Hell was so much better than this. At least for the first thirty years, Dean held onto his innocence, the knowledge that he saved Sam, that Sam was alive because of him.

But Sam was dead now, a slave to the devil himself.

And Cas was dead too, a slave to his own indifference.

"Please, Cas," Dean whimpered, shaking his head in the grass. His body began shaking, shivering violently as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. At last, after an eternity, the fire stopped. His body slumped, tension drained from his muscles.

The spark that kept him fighting finally went out.

In its stead was ice, climbing into his veins from his fingertips, marching its way into his heart, where it settled, dormant and heavy.

After several long moments, the shaking stopped too. The ice stopped moving. Everything was still.

Dean vaguely registered the feel of fingers entwining with his own, but the feeling was fleeting, replaced immediately by frozen numbness. He stared ahead of him, unblinking, unseeing, breaths shallow in his chest as he whispered, _"Please, Cas. Please kill me."_

Everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS This is what alcohol-induced hypothermia feels like.


	6. 2012, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who said the apocalypse couldn't be adorable?

Dean woke up on January 1, 2012, coming into consciousness in the way he did every morning: unconsciously bracing himself for the impending agony of the headache he always carried around, like a backpack, weighing him down and reminding him of his necessity for the constant numbness of intoxication.

Body tense, he slowly woke up to the feeling of… lightness.

There was no headache, no opening and closing of his fist covered in dried blood and scabbed over, no bodily aches and soreness from stumbling through the day, no tremor in his hand from the lack of alcohol in his system.

He felt relieved. He felt healed. He felt _great_.

A thick red duvet covered his naked body, and as he finally took a breath, he felt an extra weight over his ribcage. He looked down to find his fingers entwined in between another set of fingers, the tanned skin of a familiar arm draped across his midsection.

He rolled over in the embrace and touched his forehead to Cas’s, still sleeping, eyelids flitting back and forth beneath his eyelids. It was so simple, so human, the thought of Cas dreaming of another reality where they weren’t in this hell together.

But right now wasn’t hell. Right now was perfect.

Dean grinned from ear to ear in a kind of innocent glee he hadn’t felt in… maybe ever.

He had no idea why. There was no explanation to it. It was like when Cas still had his grace, still had the ability to touch his hand to Dean’s face and cure all his aches and pains, heal his wounds and his heart with his magic and small smiles.

Dean leaned in and kissed Cas’s forehead, and the tip of his nose, and the sharp line of his cheekbone, then lowered his kisses to pepper them across his jaw and neck, murmuring between each one, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Cas groaned, then whispered, hoarse and deep, “I love you too. Now shut up ‘n let me sleep.”

“No, _you_ shut up,” Dean replied, grinning into the crook of Cas’s neck. “I’m in love with you and I’ve lived too long hiding that and everything is okay right now.”

Cas curled further into their embrace and shifted his head so that it was buried in Dean’s chest, right under his chin, then mumbled, “It’s the apocalypse. Nothing is okay.”

“Right now it is, though. And right now is what matters.”

Cas paused before replying, “Touché.”

“I have a question though.”

“Hmm?”

“What happened last night?” Dean asked.

Groaning again, Cas replied, “You drank too much, then I’m guessing you fell down the stairs and hit your head. I found you, and you proceeded to threaten to kill yourself and blame all your problems on your inability to exist without anyone to wait on hand and foot. You almost died.” When Dean didn’t respond, Cas added, “So now we’re even.”

Dean huffed a laugh, unable to stop smiling for no damn reason, “It’s not a competition, Cas.”

“Are you sure? It feels like we’re constantly in a game of who can cause more destruction.”

Dean didn’t have a verbal answer for that, but he wanted to show Cas that they were more than destructive forces. They were more than tortured souls. They were more than this world gave them credit for.

So Dean trailed his fingertips over Cas’s body, lazily dragging them around the soft, warm skin of his arms and shoulders and neck. He rolled Cas onto his back and climbed on top of him, and, starting at his head, placed kisses all over his body, leaving Cas writhing and gasping and clutching at Dean, openly displaying this affection for each other that they’d denied themselves for months, and before that, years.

Dean placed a kiss on Cas’s body for each memory stored his mind of every time he wanted to tell Cas he loved him and didn’t. He thought back to longing glances and tense stares and words bitten in anger. He thought of times that never happened but could have, road trips in the Impala across the US as hunters, partners in crime with the same ideal. He thought of times where they were just ordinary people living ordinary lives, completely oblivious to the paranormal: Dean, a marketing exec living the American dream; Cas, a freewheeling backpacker using his own two feet to walk himself down the road of fulfillment and never finding answers, but enjoying the journey nonetheless.

He thought about the taste of Cas’s skin, enjoying it on his tongue, salty and sweet with a touch of sunshine and the feel of hazy, lazy summer days that occurred in everyone’s childhood but his own.

When Dean finished kissing Cas, he lay back down beside him and stared at his profile, all sharp edges and stubble, long lashes over dark circles that showed his perpetual weariness more than his demeanor ever could. He dozed in a deep half-sleep, that small smile curled at the edges of his lips which Dean missed seeing more than he missed anything else about their old life. The light of the sun streaming through the dusty window fell over Cas, and the effect didn’t remind Dean of his angelhood.

Rather, it reminded him of Cas’s humanity, taking in the morning sun on earth, just like everyone else.

***

The next few months were some of the happiest of Dean’s life. He felt like he reached nirvana, or whatever the post-apocalyptic equivalent of nirvana could be.

Nothing changed, specifically. It was like the new year shut the door on the demons swirling around in Dean’s brain, and for the first time in a long time, he felt like he could finally see the world around him, like a cloud of fog had lifted from his mind, and in its wake, only light remained.

Dean took pride in his work for the first time. He woke up every day next to Cas, who was slowly ebbing away from the heavier drugs, and was left only with a hefty yet manageable daily dose of amphetamines. Together, they ran the camp. Cas planned community activities to boost morale, and offered to go on trips with Dean. For months, Cas was always by his side, like old times, finally shifting back into the swing of his old self, the courageous, manic, brilliant soldier he’d been for millennia before he ever even knew of Dean’s existence. Cas found an area near camp to plant crops so that they would have fresh vegetables come harvest time, and threw himself into that endeavor with a level of fervor he had previously only reserved for his passion toward the exploration of narcotics and their effects.

Dean focused on improving the quality of life at the camp. He improved the barracks, had Chuck conduct interviews to determine who would be best suited for which tasks, and had Charlie create a work schedule so that the camp eventually ran itself. Everyone had a duty, and Dean worked hard at being the leader everyone believed he could be.

To be safe, however, Dean sent Jim on long-term missions continually, despite his protests. When he would come back complaining, Dean would point to the form Chuck filled out about him and reply, “Sorry, man, this is what Chuck said you’re best at.”

“I’m an _architect_ , Dean!” Jim would whine.

Dean shrugged, helpless, and if he got a little too much joy out of Jim’s misery at being far away and in constant peril, then that was no one’s business but Dean’s.

One evening in the short span of time between winter and summer, when it was still cold as balls but there was a sweetness in the air, an edge that plucked at the heartstrings in yearning for better weather, Dean crossed the camp and knocked on Charlie’s barrack door.

 _“What?”_ she shouted from inside.

Dean frowned, not expecting such an abrasive response, and replied, “It’s Dean. I just came to say hi.”

“Oh. Shit. Hold on hold on hold on!”

Dean smiled to himself as he heard shuffling and hushed whispers on the other side of the door.

“Okay, come in!”

Dean opened the door to find Charlie cross-legged on her bed, hair a mess and wearing a rumpled t-shirt and flannel pajama pants, next a young blond woman putting on her shoes.

“Hey… Abby, right?” Dean asked.

The woman looked up from her shoes and smiled, all dimples and mirth, then replied, “Hey, boss. I was just heading out.”

“Oh,” Dean said. Then he put the pieces together and added with his thumb pointed back at the door, _“Oh._ Well, I mean, if I’m interrupting, I can come back.”

“No no, it’s okay. I gotta get back to my daughter. Chuck is babysitting, and she just tortures the poor guy.” She finished lacing up her combat boots, then stood and checked herself in the mirror, scrunching up her ringlet curls before heading toward the door, clapping Dean on the shoulder and grinning on her way out.

Dean watched her go and tilted his head, staring at her ass for a few minutes longer than was probably appropriate.

When he turned back to Charlie, she was doing the same thing.

Dean pulled up a chair and straddled it backwards, saying, “I brought you a present.”

Charlie, startled from her ass-staring reverie, grinned at him. “For me? Really?”

“Don’t get too excited, I haven’t tried it yet.” Dean reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a bottle of beer.

Charlie gaped at it as she gently grabbed it from Dean’s hands, like watching heaven come rushing toward her. “Where did you get this?”

“We have a brewer on staff now, and she managed to pull together all the ingredients. It’s an ale. She’s working on a stout now, too.”

Charlie looked up at him in awe. “This is amazing, Dean.”

Dean pulled out one for himself and uncapped it using the bottom of the chair, and Charlie did too, then they clunked the glasses together in a toast. “To things finally being okay,” Charlie said.

Dean nodded and took a swig. _Damn_ it was good to have beer again.

“So,” Charlie began, rolling the bottle in her hands, “speaking of new beginnings, how are things with Cas?”

Dean shrugged and took another swig. “As good as they’re gonna get.”

Charlie nodded. “What changed?”

“I don’t really know,” Dean looked down and chewed on his lip before adding, “I think I just… stopped expecting him to be my guardian angel, and I stopped trying to make up for all the fallout that happened when I would realize he wasn't. And I think he let up on himself a little too, so we kinda met in the middle I guess. It still feels really…” Dean couldn’t think of the word.

“Unstable?” Charlie supplied.

“Yeah. Unstable. But I’m not gonna knock it. I just keep telling myself it’s good right now and that’s what matters, tomorrow and yesterday be damned.”

Charlie grinned at him and lifted her bottle again for Dean to tap his against. “That’s great to hear, Dean.”

Dean felt a flush creep up his face and smiled at himself, then cleared his throat and looked at Charlie, stern, saying, “So I have some ideas for that LARPing campaign you mentioned…”

***

Spring barreled in behind winter, surprising everyone with an April filled with warmth and sunshine.

Dean started using Sundays to funnel an entire week's worth of affection toward Cas, which Cas apparently found much more manageable than Dean's constant laser-focus on him.

Near the end of April, Dean planned a picnic for Cas. He figured out everything out the night before, so that they could sleep until noon, then wake up, get out of bed, and have a brunch picnic.

Brunch was such a pre-apocalypse concept, but Dean was determined to give Cas some of the good breakfast food they'd been missing out on since all the diners in creation closed.

It turned out that Abby was the chef, so Dean had schmoozed her over with the promise of a bottle of wine and a night off with Charlie to fix them up a picnic basket to be placed at a specific spot the next day. She agreed, and made Dean throw in a promise to babysit and also make a run to a lingerie store in the near future, "because Charlie likes stockings," she had said.

Dean really didn't need to know that.

He woke up on Sunday morning too early, bubbling over with excitement at the thought of having an entire day of lazy cuddling and talking and meditating and good food, but he forced himself to crush it down a bit, slow down the raging waters of his passion, which was what had swept Cas away to begin with.

So he fell back asleep for a few hours and woke up again to Cas circling his finger absently around Dean's navel, his face pressed to Dean's chest, listening to his heart beat.

"Hey Cas?" Dean mumbled.

"Hmm?"

"Whatcha doing?"

Dean could feel Cas's response reverberate through his chest. "No matter how active you are or how sparingly you eat, you've always had this..." He pinches the tiniest bit of fat on Dean's stomach. "I think it's called 'tummy.'"

"Thanks for pointing that out, Cas," Dean replied, smiling despite his best efforts at irritation. "Making me feel really great about myself first thing in the morning."

Cas sat up to bend down and kiss Dean's stomach, then looked up at him and added, "No, I like it."

Dean smiled and felt his face flush. "Hey, speaking of food, I have a surprise. We should get dressed."

Cas sat up on his knees and furrowed his brow, repeating, "Surprise."

"Yes, a surprise."

He narrowed his eyes. "The last time you surprised me, it was with this cabin."

Dean huffed a laugh. "This isn't nearly as grand a gesture, I promise."

Cas still looked suspicious, but he got up from bed to get dressed anyway.

***

A half hour later, they were about a mile away from camp, situated in the clearing that Cas had made when they first settled down, before Dean built his cabin.

Abby had a red-checkered blanket laid out for them, with a thermos of coffee and a picnic basket with a container of hot scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, syrup, and butter. After Dean pulled out all the fixings and set them on the blanket, he looked up at Cas to find an unreadable expression on his face, barefooted and habitually in the lotus position.

"What?" Dean asked, handing him a fork.

"This is..." Cas began, staring at the food, then looked up at Dean. "Dean, you didn't have to do all this."

Dean grinned at him. "I know. But we had a long week, and I think we deserve some good food now and again."

Cas nodded, as though just now understanding the concept of _deserving_ luxury as opposed to taking it by the throat and claiming it as his own.

"It's different when you feel like you've earned it," Cas said quietly, confirming Dean's thoughts.

Dean spooned eggs onto Cas's plate and replied, "It's also different when you're rewarding yourself with something healthy."

"It's hard to do that, though, when..." Cas trailed off.

"When what?"

Cas ran his hand through his hair and stared off into the distance. "It's hard to explain. Even if I could find the words, I'm not sure I could relay them in a way that you would understand."

"Try me," Dean replied, taking a bite of bacon, relishing in the taste of it which he hadn't eaten years.

Cas took a tentative bite too, staring thoughtfully at his food. "Everything here just feels... _wrong_. I don't know if it's the drugs talking, or the remnants of my grace, but," he takes a deep breath, "I'm not sure this is the life we were meant to be living."

"Maybe not," Dean said, "but it's the hand we've been dealt, so our only options are to bluff and keep upping the ante, or fold."

Cas nods. "I suppose you're right."

***

Full and happy, they lay on the blanket staring at the clouds floating overhead in blissful silence, fingers entwined between them.

Dean almost dozed off when he felt the light touch of lips brushing against his, and his heart fluttered in his chest.

Cas crawled between Dean's legs and kissed him with a kind of desperation that brought him right back to the makeshift tent when they were first getting started, the feel of Cas's soft, hot mouth on his own, opening his up to press their tongues together between rough nips and tugs of each other's lips.

 _God_ , Dean missed this so much. Dean missed Cas expressing himself with his body. He missed the feel of Cas on him, in him, everywhere, hands exploring and mouths devouring. He missed Cas's intensity, unlike anything Dean had ever felt, like the force of an entire ocean bearing down on him, taking over him, drowning him.

Dean lifted the hem of Cas's shirt and pulled it off over his head, trailing his hands down Cas's torso, warmed from the bright sun above them. He unbuttoned Cas's pants and pushed them down, then Cas sat up and took them off the rest of the way, discarding them beside the blanket.

Cas sat back and unbuttoned Dean's pants too, and Dean lifted his hips so Cas could slide them off of him. He sat up and pulled off his t-shirt, then let Cas push him back down, sliding their bodies together while they continued exploring each other with their hands and lips, for the first time, completely naked and with no drugs clouding their perception, only the blue sky overhead creating a soft, cool breeze over their bodies.

Cas trailed a line of kisses down Dean's chest, settling between his legs and examining Dean's dick like he'd never seen up close and personal before, and, Dean realized, maybe he hadn't yet, even though it felt like they'd been through and done everything together.

Slowly, Cas licked a stripe up Dean's shaft, and Dean gasped, hips twitching involuntarily. Cas smiled and circled his tongue around the head of Dean's cock, teasing and experimenting on him for the first time, because this was _definitely_ something they'd never done before.

Dean so often forced himself to forget his physical attraction to Cas, the pink lips and constant stubble, blazing blue eyes and stern voice. Like everything in their lives, it became Dean's survivalist instincts to shove all of those feelings aside, because sex– the only kind of sex Dean was interested in having with Cas– was never really on the table until now.

Dean didn't want to be just another body for Cas to use and discard like everyone else. Maybe it made him selfish, but Dean wanted more than Cas's body, so he wanted that feeling in return.

The way Cas swallowed him down, while utterly fucking _filthy_ , earning a choked moan from Dean, was given the same kind of care and curiosity Cas used to have when he was an angel, back when everything was about giving and not taking, about victory and not punishment.

Cas teased him mercilessly, wringing out every ounce of pleasure over deliciously agonizing minutes, pressing one spit-slick finger, then two, then three into Dean, stretching him open with the same kind of preciseness and thoroughness with which Cas rolled joints and weighed out grams of speed.

After many broken pleas, Cas finally pressed himself into Dean, bottoming out slowly and lying still inside of Dean for an eternity, forehead pressed against Dean's and eyes closed, enjoying the feel of unity for a brief moment before Dean whined, "Please, Cas..." which was all it took for Cas to pull out and shove back in again, immediately grazing Dean's prostate and sending explosions of pleasure through his body.

Cas wrapped his arms around Dean's back and mumbled into his neck, "Hold on to me," then lifted Dean up and sat them back down, Cas in his lotus position and Dean on his lap, legs wrapped around his hips, chests pressed together.

Dean cupped Cas's face in his hands and kissed him as Cas bucked into him from below, steady thrusts and hips grinding against Dean's ass between hot huffs of air and quiet moans.

Cas trailed kisses down Dean's neck and sucked marks onto his shoulders. Dean could feel his eyelashes bat against his skin as he tried to get somehow closer to Cas, smelling his hair and running his hands up and down his back. He wanted to consume every blessed inch of Cas he could reach.

Cas gripped Dean's hips and thrust into him deeper and faster, Dean's dick slick with sweat and cum between their bodies.

Dean hesitated at the precipice for a lifetime, waiting for some sign from Cas that he was close too, but Cas just kept giving Dean everything and taking all Dean had to give, a blissful cycle of want and reward, pleasure and triumph, everything they'd stored up together over the span of time they'd known each other finally acted out, released into the throes of reality to be laid to rest in memory.

Dean held the Om around Cas's neck in his hand as he grasped onto to Cas for dear life, letting himself be taken apart by this man who, powerless, was still a force to be reckoned with, a body crushed and then strengthened by the immense mind and soul of a creature handcrafted into existence by divinity itself.

As Cas tensed up underneath Dean, he began chanting tiny whispers, murmurs into Dean's skin of, "I love you."

When Dean whispered a broken, "I love you too, Cas. I always will," into his ear, Cas came with a sharp exhale, hips shuddering into Dean as fingers gripped his hipbones tight.

Dean came with a strangled cry, clutching onto Cas and the Om, relishing in the blissful, brief moment that he finally felt close enough to his fallen angel.

Breathless and suddenly drowsy, Dean pulled off of him and lay down. Cas curled up next to him, and Dean pulled the blanket around them.

Cas mumbled, voice deep and sleepy, "The eye of the storm has passed."

Dean shushed him and kissed him once more, then fell asleep in the quickly fading sunlight as dark clouds gathered overhead.

***

Minutes later, or maybe it was hours, Dean was woken by a cold chill up his spine. The temperature had dropped, but the chill was from something else, a _feeling_ , a sickness swirling in his gut.

He sat up and opened his eyes. Cas was still next to him, sleeping peacefully in the grass. The sky had darkened, thick storm clouds increasing the intense gusts of winds whirling around them.

At last his eyes landed on the source of the _wrongness_ : a pair of white shoes, walking toward them; nicely pressed, white suit pants; and a white blazer with a red rose pinned to the lapel.

A familiar, smiling face stared down at them. "Hello, Dean."

Dean couldn't move. He couldn't think. He couldn't breathe. The face staring down at him was the same face that haunted his nightmares every night. It was the face he imagined when he cried himself to sleep, when he drank himself into oblivion, when all he wanted was to die.

"Sam," Dean whispered.

Smile spreading into a grin, Lucifer replied, "Not quite."


	7. 2013

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pfft, plot? Lame.

_He held his breath as the creaking noise became so loud, he could feel the ground vibrate under his feet._

_The crackling of flames were drowned in the ocean of screams and wails of agony._

_When the watchtower finally collapsed, he knew they were all fucked._

_But he didn't care. He just needed to find his fallen angel._

_He ran into the cabin he built, bead curtain flying, four pounds resting on a five pound trigger and his finger itching with the need to press harder when he spotted a familiar face in a white suit perched on_ his _bed._

_"Why are you doing this?" he asked, pointing the gun at the devil, purely out of habit, knowing bullets could do nothing to harm him._

_Lucifer smiled. "You have an angel in your midst, Dean. And that means you have an angel blade. I worked very hard to ensure there were no angels left roaming around, no angel blades in their powerless, trembling hands."_

_"It's not Cas," he replied, unsure and almost pleading._

_Chuckling, Lucifer replied, "It might be Castiel." He stood up and crossed the room, picking up a statue and examining it, then setting it back down, "But if it isn't, I'm sure my baby brother knows who it is." He sauntered toward the man with the gun, stopping as the barrel rested against his chest next to the red rose on his lapel. Grinning, he concluded, "You have a year, Dean. You have a year to find me the angel you're hiding, or I'll destroy you in the only way you can be destroyed: I'll find my pathetic excuse for a brother, and drag him down to hell with me."_

_"You wouldn't."_

_Lucifer huffed a laugh and tapped his forehead. "You know, Dean, we have a bet going, Sammy and I, on how many years it'll take Castiel to break. It took you, what? Thirty? We think he'll fold much quicker than that." He moved out of the line of the gun and walked out of the room, pausing in the doorway to add, "Sam and I are looking forward to it."_

***

Dean bolted upright in bed, a thin sheath of cold sweat covering his body, panting and trembling.

"Dean?" Risa mumbled, turning over in bed and running a hand over his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Still breathless, Dean nodded and replied, "Yeah. Yeah I'm fine." He tossed the covers of Risa's bedding off of his body, then reached down to grab his pants and put them on.

"Where are you going, baby?" she asked, sitting up and running a hand down his back.

Dean stifled the urge to flinch away from her touch. "Gotta go check on Cas."

"It's three in the morning," she complained, shifting to her knees to brushing kisses to the back of his shoulders. "I'm sure he's fine. You can check on him in a few hours."

Dean stood to button his pants and toss a t-shirt over his head, thankful to be away from Risa's touch, as comforting as it sometimes was. "I just... I'll be back later."

He could _feel_ her eyes roll behind his back as he left her small bunker to trek up the hill to Cas's cabin.

Every few hours, Dean checked on the watchtower. Every time he had the Lucifer dream, he was convinced that the loud creaking followed by the crashing noises had been real, that he'd wake up to fire and mayhem and agony, powerless to stop any of it.

He didn't know what was real anymore.

One thing was certain: Lucifer was getting into his head, sending him a message that Cas was in danger, that everyone was in danger of the devil's return.

There was an angel in their midst, and Dean had to find it. Dean had to kill it before Lucifer came for Cas.

Dean had already failed at protecting Cas once. He went on a mission with them and they were overrun by croats. Dean couldn't pull Cas out.

When the scuffle was over, Cas had shattered his ankle.

Of course, the idiot always downplayed it to, "I broke my foot," but the reality was that back in the old world, he would have needed pins and surgery. Shards of bone had been shooting out of his skin, and Dean fucked all the quarantine rules to get him back to Abernathy.

Dean cried in relief when the doctor was able to set the bones and suture him up. He was even more relieved that Cas hadn't turned.

Though, Dean had wondered, against all odds, Cas _hadn't been infected with the virus_. Maybe he was still an angel after all, and that's why Lucifer was hunting them. Maybe he'd been hiding it from Dean this whole time. Maybe he still had his old angel blade...

Dean entered the cabin as quietly as he could with the rattling of the bead door behind him. The only light in the room was the moonlight coming through the windows and the soft orange glow of ash as Cas sucked his pipe. The light cast an ethereal glow on his features, and for a moment, he looked just like he had when they first met in that barn so many years ago, black, shadowy wings spread out behind him and the power of heaven at his fingertips.

Now he was just a junkie with a broken foot and a shattered mind.

"Have another nightmare?" Cas asked, voice slurred with pain meds and whatever mix of drugs he'd lapsed back into taking.

His leg was propped up on a stack of ornate pillows, and his arm was behind his head as he stared out of the skylight Dean had installed in his roof. 

"Yeah," Dean replied quietly, stomach aching at the sight of Cas so wounded, evidence that he was so _fragile_.

Every day was a coin toss for Dean: was Cas an angel or a human? Was he lying or did he just not know? Did he have an angel blade? If Cas wasn't the angel Lucifer referred to, who was? Wouldn't Dean know by now if there were an angel in their midst?

"What was it this time?" Cas asked. "Lucifer in the watchtower? The truck? The meadow?"

The first time Dean had the dream had been in the meadow, sleeping peacefully after making love with Cas. He'd woken up with a start and barely had time to put his clothes back on before running back to camp, sure that Lucifer had destroyed it.

A year later, Dean still dreamed of him. Every dream had the same conversation in a different setting, and always ended in, _"Sam and I are looking forward to it."_

It was driving Dean mad.

"Here," Dean whispered, then said louder, "It was in here. I... I came to see if you were okay."

Cas chuckled. "Five by five, Dean." He set his pipe down and propped his head up under both of his hands to get a better view of Dean, still huddled near the doorway, looking down at his feet. "So you're on the love-me side of the coin right now. No accusations that I'm hiding a blade from you? That my grace is still floating around in me somewhere and that I'm just— how did you put it, again?— _faking it?"_ When Dean didn't reply, Cas continued, "And then there's my favorite conspiracy theory: that I'm hiding another angel in the camp, and Lucifer has possessed your dreams to warn you that he's coming for you."

Dean clenched his jaw, and replied quietly, "He's not coming for _me_ , Cas."

"I'm sorry, what was that? You know I can never make out your paranoid mumbling."

Like every time Dean was around Cas, he fought the urge to reach out, to touch him and comfort him and show him his love in actions instead of the words he can so rarely speak.

He couldn't risk it. He couldn't risk Lucifer getting into his head and seeing his memories, controlling his dreams, seeing his love for Cas, because that would just make him search _harder_ for the angel in their midst. He'd get that much more _joy_ from taking Cas to hell and torturing him until he tortured in return.

So Dean kept his distance. For a year, Dean pretended he just didn't want Cas anymore. That their entire past was due to desperation, drugs, and drunkenness, and now that he found Risa, he'd moved on.

He tried not to think of the hurt on Cas's face the first time he found them together, weeks after what happened in the meadow. It was a watchtower party, and Dean planned it so that Cas would find them on the balcony, see the way that Dean looked at Risa, see the way he kissed her.

Cas got the picture easily enough, and went back to his drugs and his boy toy, his psychotic bouts of not believing he or the world they were in even existed.

And that was that. They'd come full circle, returning to the tension-filled non-words between them, glares and glances and miles of space when all Dean ever wanted to do was hold Cas's hand in his own and tell him everything would be okay.

Dean swallowed and turned to leave, unable to meet Cas's gaze in the light of the full moon. "I guess I'll get going. Just... making sure you're okay."

"Old habits die hard." Cas grabbed up his pipe again, and Dean heard the flicking of his lighter and the soft popping sounds of the ash as Cas breathed it in.

Dean hesitated, fighting with himself and his compulsion to climb into bed with Cas, hold him and kiss him and tell him that it was all a lie, that he couldn't fucking _stand_ Risa, and that he was doing all of this to save Cas from an eternity in hell.

"You know," Cas said, "if you _really_ wanted to kill Lucifer, I'm sure the Colt is still around somewhere, right? I mean, _obviously_ the angel blade I have hidden up my ass would be a better weapon, but considering it's the best substitute I have for a plug, I'm rather partial to it, so you'll have to find another ironically phallic-shaped object with which to kill the devil."

Dean stopped in his tracks. "The Colt?"

Cas huffed a laugh. "It was a _joke_ , Dean. There's no way you're going to find the Colt in this mess of a world."

"Right," Dean nodded, already formulating a plan. "It's probably gone."

He left the cabin and made a bee-line for his truck at the bottom of the hill.

***

Dean didn't usually leave the compound without an intricate plan and at least two people with him— camp rules, after all— but if the Colt was the only chance Dean had of saving Cas from Lucifer's wrath in a year's time, then he would do whatever it took to find it.

Even if it meant making another deal.

Dean was thankful there was a crossroads nearby, and he stopped the truck in the middle of the road, getting out to do a brief sweep before pulling a box out of his glove compartment and all the supplies he needed to complete the summoning.

He dug a little hole, did the deed, and stood, then leaned on the front grill of the truck, waiting.

After several minutes, a gruff voice beside him said, "Well, well, well. If it isn't Dean Winchester."

Dean turned to the man, who wore a black suit with a red tie. He was middle-aged, short, and Dean already didn't like him. "Who the hell are you? I was expecting a hot chick."

The demon put a hand to his chest and scoffed. "Dean, I'm offended. And my name is Crowley, by the way."

Dean pushed off the truck and said, "Let's just get this over with."

"What, no wining and dining? You Winchesters are so _pushy."_

Brow furrowed, Dean asked, "How the hell do you know?"

Crowley chuckled, and replied, "I'm the big boss of the crossroads demons, Dean.  Surely you've heard of me."

Dean clenched his jaw and remained silent.

"Fine, we'll do it your way. What is it you want?"

"If you can manage it, it'd be great to have my brother back," Dean replied, crossing his arms over his chest.

Crowley outright laughed. "I'm afraid that's a bit out of my jurisdiction, considering that your brother now resides with _the devil himself_. I have a lot of sway down there, but even I can't make that happen for you."

"All right, option two, then: I need the Colt."

Crowley's smile immediately dropped. "Interesting. Very interesting. And why do you need that?"

"Why do you need to know?"

"I suppose I don't," Crowley took a step closer to Dean and smiled, "but the rules change where the Colt's involved, Dean. You ought to know that by now." He circled around Dean slowly, eyeing him, and added, "Given where it currently resides, and the... _delicate_ balance of things presently, here's my offer: you can only have it for a day, and at the end of that day, the deal is up, and you'll be mine."

Dean swallowed, and mulled it over in his head, then asked, "When can you get it to me?"

The corners of Crowley's lips twitched into a smile as he replied, "Exactly one year from today."

Dean would have one year. One year to find Lucifer. One year to ensure that Charlie and Chuck and everyone else at camp could survive without him.

One year pretending he didn't love Cas, which was for the best, because it would make it that much easier for him once the deed was done.

After a brief hesitation, Dean said, "Deal," and held out his hand.

Crowley took it and pulled him in, crushing his lips against Dean's and pulling away with a grin. "Welcome back to hell, Dean."


	8. 2014, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've always been curious to understand the episode "The End" from 2014!Dean's perspective, because here it is. Gaping plotholes not erased, but slightly minimized.
> 
> PS *hands you box of tissues*

_Fifth time in your bedroom_  
 _And finally, we rested_  
 _And you leaned upon your elbow_  
 _And began to speak to me_

_But you stopped yourself and kissed me_  
 _And I grabbed your lips and told you_  
 _I know, I know, I know_  
 _I feel the same as you_

***

The month leading up to what Dean began referring to as, simply, _The Day_ , the Lucifer dreams changed. They became more vivid, the dialogue slowly turned into something new, and the settings were of places Dean had never seen.

The evening before The Day, Dean dreamt of mass chaos, machinegun fire overhead while he stared Lucifer straight in the eye in an overgrown garden.

For the first time, he was watching himself in the dream instead of looking through his own eyes. For the first time, Lucifer said, _"Whatever you do, you will always end up here. No matter what choices you make, whatever details you alter,_ we _will always end up... here."_

The version of himself he watched was... _different._ He was younger, his eyes were brighter, he was sober. He was even wearing a shirt Dean hadn't seen in years.

Dean had woken up from the dream, alone in his own bed, breathless and face wet with tears.

He had no idea what Lucifer was trying to tell him, but considering all he had to do was pull the goddamn trigger, he didn't give it much thought anyway. He was just happy that Lucifer had stopped taunting him with threatening Cas. The vivid, terrifying dreams were heaven compared to the fear of losing Cas.

It was happening, no matter what. The pieces were set in motion. Full speed ahead. He had two days left.

Tonight, he was going to say his goodbyes as best he could.

He went to say his first goodbye to Baby. He had stopped visiting her after she stopped running, and he lacked the equipment to fix all of her parts, so he let her rust and rot away, and it broke his heart to think about. It broke his heart even worse to see her in the state he left her in, abandoned, rusted over, covered in dried croat blood.

Passersby had taken what remaining parts she had, and Dean himself had taken some to bring back to camp.

It was night, and everyone was up at the evening's watchtower party after dinner, so Dean snuck away to visit Baby one last time.

As he approached, there was a man inspecting her. Dean couldn't see his face, but his fluid movements indicated he was human, not croat.

Dean crept closer to him, gun in hand, silent as he watched the man... _caress_ Baby.

The only person who touched her like that was Dean.

"Oh, Baby, what did they _do_ to you?"

And his voice sounded... familiar.

Dean did what he learned to do in all situations that involved suspicious behavior: he snuck up on the guy and knocked him unconscious, then picked him up and threw him over his shoulder to take back to camp.

***

Dean took the man back to his cabin and set him down, then flipped on the switch to turn on the light.

He froze.

"Well I'll be damned," he muttered to himself.

Cas was right.

Dean was losing it.

He stared at the face of... himself.

Dean did what he learned to do in all situations that involved suspicious persons: he handcuffed his apparent other self to the ladder, and felt slightly better that he could feel warm skin and a pulse on his wrist, that he was a tangible, malleable being, and not a dream.

Maybe this was all still a dream.

Maybe he'd never woken up last night, and Lucifer found a way to trap him in his own mind so that the camp and everyone in it would crumble while he wrought chaos trying to find the angel still apparently in their midst.

Dean had spent the past year looking, asking questions, keeping an eye out, and he saw nothing. There was no one in his goddamn camp who had any semblance of grace in them.

Which meant one thing.

Cas was still an angel.

That didn't matter to Dean, though. He just knew he need to protect Cas at all costs.

Although _all costs_ turned out to be his soul. There would be no passing Go, no collecting two-hundred dollars. In a couple days, he'd be back in hell.

He'd spent the last year learning to accept it. It was okay. It was the least he deserved after a lifetime of being, as his father always said, _a piece of shit for brains_.

And now he had eternity as penance at the tips of his fingers.

No matter what lie ahead of him, there was no pain worse than looking at Cas's face every day of the past two years, convincing him that Dean didn't love him anymore.

Hell was mild in comparison to what he had to endure in his reality.

Nevertheless, out of habit, Dean did the drill, doused the guy in holy water, tossed some salt on him, and made a small cut on his arm with a silver knife. Nothing happened.

He dug through the man's pockets, and inside of them were all of Dean's possessions, including the exact same box cutter he swiped from a grocery store clerk when he was nine, as well as his dad's old switchblade and the tiny lock-picking toolkit he carried in his back pocket along with his wallet.

Dean opened the wallet to find credit cards in the name of Robert Smith, fake IDs from California and Kentucky in the names of Jagger and Richards. He even found, in the back, the tiny picture of his mother he carried around with him all the time, black and white and tattered at the edges.

He thumbed over the picture, the real version of which was in his wallet in the small table drawer by his bed.

His own copy of all of these items were either on him or in this room with him.

None of this made any fucking sense.

Then again, nothing really did anymore.

So he sat down and cleaned his gun, focusing on other things as he waited for whatever it was inhabiting his other body to come back to consciousness.

His first instinct was, of course, to put a bullet in his other self's brain before he even woke up. If Dean was completely sure that the ground under his feet was real, and that he wasn't dreaming, and the devil himself wasn't manipulating this entire situation, he probably would have.

But he wasn't sure of anything anymore, so he figured he'd let the guy talk.

Thankfully, he didn't need to wait long for his questions to be answered. "What the hell?"

"I should be asking that question, don't you think?" Dean replied, pointing the gun at him. "In fact, why don't you give me one good reason why I shouldn't gank you here and now?"

"Because you'd only be hurting yourself."

The dude talked like him, that was for damn sure. "That's very funny."

"Look, man, I'm no shapeshifter, or demon, or anything, okay?"

"Yeah I know. I did the drill while you were out. Silver, salt, holy water. Nothing." He looked down at the picture of his mother resting on the table next to him. "But you know what was funny was that you had every lock pick, box cutter, and switchblade that I carry. You wanna explain that? Oh, and the... resemblance while you're at it."

"Zachariah," his other self replied, as though that would answer all of his questions.

Still, it was a name he hadn't heard in a long time. "Come again?"

"I'm you from the tail end of 2009. Zach plucked me from my bed and threw me five years into the future."

This was a dream. It had to be. Dean was waiting for Lucifer to step out from the darkness at any moment and have his ' _Sammy and I are looking forward to it'_ conversation. Hell, he'd even take the ' _We will always end up... here'_ conversation at this point, just so that he could get a rope around what was going on.

Zachariah was an angel, though. If he was around, he could convince Lucifer that Zach was the angel hiding at the camp, and maybe the bastard would leave them in peace. Dean tried to keep the urgency out of his voice when he asked, "Where is he? I want to talk to him," and avoided adding, _"Cas and my soul is on the line here."_

"I don't know," the other Dean replied.

Dean's heart tinged at the edges in disappointment. "Oh, you don't know."

"No! I don't know. Look, I just want to get back to my own fucking year, okay?"

Dean was done with this situation. All he wanted was to spend the evening peacefully saying his goodbyes and then kill the devil, save his soulmate, and spend eternity rotting in hell. A fucked up conversation with an alternate self was not helping the process.

He squatted down, and for kicks, said, "Okay. If you're me, then tell me something only I would know."

His other self hesitated, eyes narrowed, and replied, "Rhonda Hurley."

Dean stifled a groan.

Out of all the memories he could have chosen, all the embarrassing, awkward moments of his life; the faces of every single person he'd tortured in hell; the shameful porn and the prostitutes; out of all of his memories, he just _had_ to bring up this one.

"We were nineteen. She made us try on her panties. They were pink. And satiny. And you know what? We kinda liked it." The other Dean smirked in triumph, and Dean realized he hadn't seen himself smile in almost five years. He so rarely looked in mirrors, and moreover, he rarely had cause to smile.

Still, he could admit defeat when he saw it. "Touché." He stood, and asked, "So what, Zach zapped you up here to see how bad it gets?" which opened the box for a tedious Q & A that Dean answered absently while packing up for his second goodbye of the evening.

Then, like bringing up Rhonda Hurley, the douchebag _had_ to bring up Dean's second least favorite topic. "What about Sam?"

At least he hadn't asked about Cas.

Dean swallowed and looked away. "Heavyweight showdown in Detroit. From what I understand, Sam didn't make it."

"You weren't with him?"

"No." Lie. He'd been there when Sam said yes, watched his eyes go from Sammy, sobbing and apologizing, to Lucifer, laughing maniacally in triumph. It all happened in the space of a second. The least he could do was spare his past self the trauma of knowing the truth. "No, me and Sam, we haven't talked in... hell, five years." Except as Lucifer. Dean spoke to Lucifer pretty frequently nowadays.

"We never tried to find him?" The hurt on his other self's face was pitiful. Dean missed the days when the only things on his shoulders were his memories of hell and his unyielding will to protect Sam.

The chances of Dean saving Sam were slim when every waking moment was devoted to making sure Cas didn't drown himself in his addiction-fueled existential crisis. "I had other people to worry about."

Which was exactly where Dean needed to be headed.

"Where are you going?"

Dean clenched his jaw and picked up his bag to swing over his shoulder. "I gotta run an errand."

Other Dean asked, incredulous, "Whoa, you're just gonna leave me here?"

"Yes. Look, I got a camp full of twitchy trauma survivors out there with an apocalypse hanging over their head. The last thing they need to see is a version of the _Parent Trap_. So yeah, you stay locked down." He really didn't need to be thinking about some freaky, alternate self snooping around his camp while he was busy saying goodbye to the only thing that even mattered anymore.

Of course the guy would plead. It was Dean, after all, the manipulative son of a bitch. "Okay. All right. Fine. But you don't have to cuff me, man. Oh come on, you don't trust yourself?"

Dean stared at him. His 2009 self was so innocent by comparison. The man he looked down at was tortured, but he was good. There was blood on his hands, sure, there always had been, but the Dean of today _bathed_ in blood. Dean didn't trust himself to get through a single waking hour without drinking. He didn't trust himself not to destroy everything he touched. He didn't even trust himself to walk into Cas's cabin and tell him the truth.

He paused at the door and, with a small shake of his head, replied, "No. Absolutely not."

***

Dean paused at the steps up to Cas's cabin, already knowing what he'd probably see going on inside of it. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a few minutes, imagining that goddamn sphere, or whatever the hell shape it turned into, and tried to focus.

It didn't matter that he'd be dead in a couple days. What mattered was that he couldn't go without seeing Cas— the real Cas, _his_ Cas, the one who, somewhere deep down inside, still loved him— one more time.

More importantly, Dean needed to see Cas one last time as the man he really was, in the present, in the flesh, not hiding behind booze or tragedy or demon deals, but he owed it to Cas to show him that yes, he was a broken man, but he was Cas's broken man, and always would be, even if Cas no longer wanted the pieces.

He climbed the steps and walked through the bead curtain to find Cas naked in bed with two women and Jim, all tangled together on the big bed, some under the covers and some over, in various states of intoxication.

When Jim saw him, his eyes widened and he fell out of the bed, quickly picking up his clothes and darting out of the room, avoiding Dean's gaze.

Dean smirked, and turned back to the women, who had interrupted their making out to stare at Dean. He asked, "May I speak to The Enlightened One alone, please?"

One rolled her eyes and the other hit her shoulder with a _tsk_. They grabbed their clothes and left, one of them pausing to give Dean's shoulder a squeeze while she looked at him with a surprising amount of understanding.

Dean narrowed his eyes in confusion as she walked on, but his heart felt a little lighter, knowing that he'd been given confidence from someone else, even if she didn't say anything and Dean had no idea who she was.

Cas, after having held his breath for several seconds, finally exhaled, a puff of smoke trailing out of his parted lips, and asked, "Is there a reason you felt the need to interrupt my otherwise pleasant evening with your standoffish, militaristic presence,  O Fearless Leader?"

This was how Cas talked to him now. Constant sarcasm, taunting, irritation. All he wanted was to tell Cas that it was an act, to hold his hand and apologize for spending two years completely disregarding him.

When Dean didn't reply, Cas added, "It's late. Shouldn't you be in the throes of what I imagine is incredibly exciting, monogamous, heterosexual passion with Risa?"

Dean swallowed and looked down at his feet. "No. I came... I came because I had something to say."

Cas took another hit and exhaled while saying with a flourish of his hand, "When you speak, we listen, Your Majesty."

"Look," Dean began, not wanting to point out that it was Cas who made him do this leader gig in the first place, and it wasn't Dean's fault that everyone took it so damn seriously. "Some big shit is gonna go down in the next couple days. And I just... I need you to know..." Dean had so many words planned in his head. So many _I love you_ s and _I've missed you_ s and monologues of emotion that he wasn't comfortable expressing to anyone else in his entire life but the fallen angel in front of him, whom Dean was pretty sure would just make fun of him now anyway.

But maybe words weren't even necessary anymore.

He looked at the ornate rug he stood on, the center circle worn and faded from years of being walked on and sat on and probably fucked on.

Then he turned his gaze back to Cas. "Do you mind if we...?" He gestured to the rug.

"You want to meditate? Now?" Cas asked, finally letting down his mask of resentment and opting for concerned curiosity.

"Yeah," Dean replied. "I kinda need to."

Cas put the joint out in an ashtray and stood from the bed. He was naked, but, Dean noted, he looked good. He was tan and muscular, like he had been in the meadow during that short, blissful span of time when everything was okay.

In retrospect, it really had been the eye of the storm.

Dean was glad that Cas could take care of himself without Dean's nagging influence to get him to exercise and eat enough. He wasn't sure, but Cas seemed more lucid, less neurotic. He hoped that Cas was back to smoking weed and taking low-dose amphetamines, and that he'd quit the painkiller addiction he developed when he broke his foot, and the coke addiction before that.

He felt better knowing that Cas had the opportunity to live a long, healthy life.

Without Dean in it.

He sat down on the rug, and Cas sat across from him. He held out his hands and Dean took them, reveling in their gentleness and their warmth, realizing that this was probably the last time he'd ever hold them again.

His hands trembled and he squeezed Cas's tight, desperate, not wanting to let go, then bowed his head, a tear falling down his face as his breath hitched.

"Dean?" Cas asked, voice filled with concern that Dean didn't deserve.

Dean squared his jaw and took a deep breath, forcing his dark thoughts away and picking up the sphere again, because the sphere meant peace and present and everything that really mattered.

Right now was eternity. The eye of the storm was infinite.

"I'm okay," Dean replied with a small nod.

Cas remained silent, and Dean closed his eyes, and thought of his sphere, his sad shriveled heart, counting down its finite beats until it would finally stop in just a couple days' time.

Everything melted away.

After a few minutes, or maybe a few millennia, Cas removed his hands from Dean's, and then he felt them lift his chin, and a soft set of lips touch against his own.

 _Kissing, kissing,_ he thought out of habit, then kissed back out of habit too before opening his eyes and pulling away.

"Cas," he began, shaking his head, already feeling the bubble rising in his throat. "We can't."

"Why not?" Cas tilted his head slightly, genuinely curious.

 _God_ , Dean was going to miss that little head tilt.

Dean buried his face in his hands, elbows resting on his knees, unable to look into those bright blue eyes, pupils blasted open, red-rimmed and weary, yet still staring at Dean with the same level of compassion and intensity he always had, since the moment he walked into that barn so many years ago.

Cas had saved him, then.

Dean was just returning the favor.

 _"Fuck,"_ Dean said, muffled behind his hands, then dropped them and wiped his eyes, flooding over with tears he couldn't hold back anymore. "I wasn't gonna do this. I was just going to come in here and tell you..." His voice broke then, and his throat constricted. He couldn't continue.

"Tell me what?" Cas asked, frantically looking from one of Dean's tear-filled eyes to the other and back. "What did you do, Dean? What big thing is about to happen?"

Dean lowered his head and shook it. "I can't... I can't tell you that."

"Does it have to do with Lucifer? Your dreams? Dean, you need to tell me. This is important." Cas grabbed his face in both of his hands and forced Dean to look at him. "Did you make a deal?"

"How did you..."

"I'm high, Dean. Not blind. _Now please_ _tell me what's going on."_

Dean didn't want to answer that. Not until Cas really needed to know. Tonight wasn't about discussing plans or futility. It was about saying goodbye.

Cas's eyes bore into Dean, and he continued, voice barely above a whisper as he figured out what he'd been searching for in Dean's face, "You knew this would happen. You've known it all along. Is this why you've been treating me like this for two years? The dreams? Not because you fell in love with Risa, but because you were pushing me away?"

Dean hesitated, then lowered his gaze and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Cas remained silent, and let go of Dean's face.

When Dean looked at him again, his mouth was agape in terror and disbelief, and... pain. Agonized, heartbroken pain that had never been Dean's intent to cause.

Dean had to avert his eyes again, because Cas's expression was too much to bear. The dam of tears opened and he let out a single sob, wiping his face with his hands as he whispered, "I did it because I love you."

Cas grabbed him by the shirt, bunching it in his fists as he yanked Dean toward him.

Stunned, Dean lifted his head to find those bright, compassionate eyes filled with fury. "You do not get to decide my fate for me, Dean Winchester. We could have spent the past two years _happy_ and _together_ , because, for all my problems, my addictions and psychoses and constant relapses, and even though I no longer have my grace, I am still your goddamn guardian angel, and I always will be." When Cas saw the stunned, hurt expression on Dean's face, his own softened, and he let go of Dean, adding quietly, "We could have figured this out."

Dean didn't want to tell him that it was more than his own life on the line, it was his soul, and Cas's too, and he wouldn't have risked that, even for two years of bliss.

The eye of the storm was infinite.

Dean's throat was too tight to respond, so he stared at Cas as Cas stared back at him. His chin trembled, and for the first time in all the years they'd known each other, Cas's eyes welled up with tears. Voice shaking, he whispered, "I can't believe you would do this to me. You can't..." The tears began to fall as a soft sob escaped his lips. "You can't leave me. I can't do this without you, Dean." He shook his head as another sob wracked his body, and he added, "I love you too much to let this happen to you."

Dean had no more words in him. The only thing left in his body was remorse and his love for Cas.

He pulled Cas in for another kiss, this one deep and frantic and so, so desperate, like every shared breath would be their last, like they were counting down the moments in soft touches and tears and their hearts beating in unison until soon there would only be one.

Cas stood and dragged Dean to his feet, then pulled him over to the bed where they lay down, and Cas stripped him of his clothes, devouring him in his sorrow and his love, which became a shared concept in this darkness of their lives.

They made love, not for release, but for a sense of togetherness, of wholeness. Together they were strong, but apart they were broken, and nothing but the exhaled nothings whispered in each other's ears as they rocked together in a slow, steady rhythm really mattered.

The eye of the storm was infinite.

Neither of them slept that night. Between the lovemaking, they talked to each other, as they always had, and their tears turned into sad smiles, and their sad smiles turned into laughter, and their laughter turned into kissing, and their kissing turned into more lovemaking. Over and over the cycle continued until the sun rose the next morning.

As the soft orange glow of the sun streamed in through the dusty window, Cas pulled Dean's palm to his chest over his heart. "You don't have to do this, you know. You can let Lucifer take me. I'll happily go if it means you can live."

Dean leaned in and kissed him again, savoring the feel of his warm lips against his own, then he pulled away reluctantly and said, "Deal's already made. There's no backing out now."

Cas wrapped himself around Dean and entwined their legs together, and they both reveled in their last moments, completely shattered, but alive and in love nonetheless.

The eye of the storm was infinite.


	9. 2014, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I nixed the "say yes to Michael" arc because it was dumb. Otherwise I transcribed the scenes with 2014!Dean pretty much directly but for a few lines here and there. 
> 
> Here you go, alt-canon-canon fixed to the best of my ability.
> 
> You'll need a lot of tissues and a lot of whiskey for this.

Dean woke up late the next morning alone in Castiel’s bed. He’d always called it _their_ bed, but after tomorrow, it wouldn't be his anymore.

Although Dean had never been sentimental about material possessions, the bed meant a lot to him: it was a safe haven for them for a long time, a place where the impending doom forever looming over their heads didn’t really matter, where they could be themselves without their burdens of duty, without their addictions or their shame or their regret.

Dean stood and got dressed, then pulled the sheets and covers back over the bed, turning down the duvet and arranging the pillows like way Cas liked. He smoothed his hand over the red, ornate fabric and straightened everything with the military-grade preciseness that his father always taught him, always made him practice before leaving any motel they ever stayed at, because, as he said, _“Routine is good for the soul, son. Clears the mind. Status quo is there for a reason.”_

Sam had always argued that the staff would have to strip the bedding anyway, but that never deterred John Winchester from making his bed every goddamn morning of his life, hangover be damned.

Dean spotted a pad of paper and a pen on the steam trunk by the window. He picked up the pen and stared at the paper for a moment before writing a note.

It felt silly, writing a goodbye in Dean’s sloppy, illegible writing. His father had _accidentally_ broken his ring finger when he was six years old—a result of John boxing his ears when Dean bought candy instead of baby food for Sammy, and Dean learned for the first time that defending himself was not an option—and they didn’t go to the hospital for it, so John set it with some electrical tape and it healed crooked. Dean could never write properly after that, and holding a pencil always felt awkward in his messed-up hand.

A gun, however, always felt comfortable.

It was the story of Dean’s life, really: too broken to use words to express himself, so he used violence instead.

He left the note somewhere Cas would or maybe wouldn’t find it, then stopped in the threshold, looking around for the last time at the sanctuary he built with his own broken hands, wishing he could stay, but knowing that his destiny resided with the devil, as he knew in his heart it always would.

It was time to deal with his past-life clone, a snarky British crossroads demon, and the devil embodied as his younger brother.

He turned around to leave the only home he’d ever had in his entire life, and didn’t look back.

***

Of course Yeager got infected. Of fucking _course_.

Dean knew he wouldn’t be able to leave the planet peacefully without one more cold-blooded kill to tally on his wall of Reasons Dean Winchester Will Rot in Hell for Eternity.

He had to get the goddamn Colt though, and he’d worry about Yeager later.

“Wait here,” he told his crew in the cold, stern voice he learned to adopt when speaking to everyone who wasn’t Cas or Charlie. Anything softer meant he wasn’t a killer of innocents. Anything lenient meant he would make exceptions to rules that kept everyone safe. Anything with a hidden smile behind it meant that he was weak, letting his humanity seep through the cracks into the soul he refused to acknowledge anymore.

For the sake of everyone around him, he remained a calculated killing machine, a barker of orders, the maker and enforcer of the law.

It worked, though. People listened to him when he spoke. Just like Cas said in earnest that they would, and later in resentment that they did.

His crew didn’t question why he was going into a potentially croat-filled abandoned warehouse by himself. They just stood and watched him walk inside, guns at the ready.

Dean walked into the dusty building and did a quick sweep for movement. Finding none, he announced, “Where the fuck are you, Crowdley?”

“It’s _Crowley,”_ said a sardonic voice behind him.

Dean turned around. Crowley was smirking at him, dressed in the exact same outfit from a year ago.

“Long time no see,” he said.

“I don’t have time for games. Just give me the damn Colt.” Dean held out his hand.

Staring Dean in the eye, Crowley reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and procured a gun which Dean looked at with fondness, like an old friend. He remembered Azazel’s face when he killed him, stunned and defeated.

Dean couldn’t wait to see that expression etched across the familiar face of the devil himself.

As he held out his hand and Crowley slowly handed it to him, but just as Dean was about to touch it, Crowley pulled it away. “Ah ah ah,” he chided, “we have some additional business to discuss.”

“There is no ‘additional business.’ You give me the Colt, I give you my soul, end of discussion.”

Crowley’s smirk slowly widened into a grin. “Insurance, Dean.”

Dean steeled his jaw.

“You see,” Crowley began, dress shoes clicking against the concrete as he walked in a slow circle around Dean, “procuring this trinket was a bit of a task— it's been all around, passed from hand to bloody hand— and for my efforts, I want to be ensured that you will actually succeed in killing Lucifer. I have a lot riding on you, you know. If you do manage to kill the devil, guess who’s next in line.”

Dean turned his head with the demon as he made his way around, and when he stopped in front of him again, Dean replied, “You’ve gotta be kidding. Who the fuck would let you run hell?”

Crowley’s smile dropped. “If you don’t succeed in killing Lucifer, I’m taking your angel’s soul too.”

“No,” Dean growled through gritted teeth.

“What? Don’t you think it would be _romantic_ to be imprisoned in hell together? Torturing mercilessly together?”

Dean’s hands balled into fists. “What’s option B?”

Crowley’s devious grin returned, and he paused a moment, staring Dean in the eye before replying, “Work for me.”

“What does that entail?”

Spinning the Colt in his hand, Crowley chuckled. “Hell doesn’t get our soul. I do. You become a demon, you do my bidding, we become best friends forever and live happily ever after.” When Dean didn’t reply, he added, “It’s a win-win.”

“The hell do you mean it’s a win-win? I lose in every angle.”

“I mean it’s a win-win for _me_. What do you say, Dean? Do we have a deal?”

Dean considered it. If he didn’t take the Colt, Lucifer was going kill Cas and drag him to hell. If he did take the Colt, but failed in killing Lucifer, he’d spend eternity as a demon working for Crowley, and Lucifer might kill Cas anyway. If he took the Colt and succeeded in killing Lucifer, he’d spend eternity in hell.

Any way he figured it, he was damned, in every sense of the word.

He took a deep breath and replied, “Deal,” then closed his eyes and braced himself for the slimy, stubbly kiss that followed.

Instead, Crowley took his hand and shoved the gun into it.

Dean opened one eye, lips still pursed, to see Crowley smiling at him with something akin to affection. With a quiet, “Good luck, Dean,” he vanished.

***

Dean felt nothing as he pulled the plug on Yeager, staring him in the eyes as the light behind them faded to nothingness.

What luck to die such a beautiful death as that, at the bad end of a bullet, knowing his soul would be protected in the divine peace of heaven.

Like everyone Dean killed, he envied Yeager, and stared at the growing pool of blood around his head for a long moment before looking up and seeing his past self gazing in horror at the scene in front of them.

“Dammit,” Dean muttered, more from the sight of Cas looking at the scene too, knowing that the other Dean was with them, the guy Cas fell in love with at the beginning of all this, innocent and naïve, so much different than the man standing in front of them today.

Of course one of the last things Cas would witness Dean do is kill an innocent man point-blank.

“I'm not gonna lie to you,” Dean began, pointing at the shocked faces of everyone around them at seeing two iterations of their leader.  “Me and him? Pretty messed up situation we got going. But believe me, when you need to know something, you will know it. Until then, we all have work to do.”

Like kill the goddamn devil.

Because Dean was their fearless leader, they closed their jaws, dropped their bewildered expressions, and got to work.

***

“What the hell was that?” Dean asked, angry, as soon as they got back to his barrack.

The first thing he noticed when walking into the room were the splinters in the floorboard where past-Dean had pulled a nail from the floor.

Dean knew being too lazy to finish the flooring would come back to bite him in the ass one day. He just didn’t realize he would be the one to do it.

Past-Dean replied, “What the hell was _that_? You just shot a guy in cold blood.”

Right, five years ago he would still be queasy about that kind of thing.

It was almost _cute_.

“We were in an open-quarantine zone. Got ambushed by some croats on the way out.” When past-Dean looked at him with confusion, Dean supplied, “Croats. Croatoans. One of them infected Yeager.”

“How do you know?”

“Because after a few years of this, I know.” Lie. He just learned not to take any chances. “Started seeing symptoms about a half an hour ago, wasn't gonna be long before he flipped. I didn't see the point in troubling a good man with bad news.” Truth was, he had no fucking clue if Yeager was infected or not. Dude was bleeding, they had a run-in, better safe than sorry. Dean learned to trust his gut when it came to his kills.

Worst case scenario, they weren’t actually infected and died a mercy killing instead of living in hell on earth until time claimed them with much less swiftness than Dean’s itchy trigger finger.

“Troubling a good man? You just blew him away in front of your own people. Don't you think that freaked them out a little bit?”

Okay, Dean reasoned, _that_ was cute. He wanted to laugh. Everyone, from toddlers to the elderly, had all seen so much worse than the slaughtering of a potentially innocent man. He had grandmas dying of heroin overdoses, children as young as six hunting in the forest for deer meat, women having coat hanger abortions because they didn’t want to bring another human into this world.

Suicide was so common, people talked about it like the weather. _“Walter was found dead in his cabin today.”_

_“Hanged or shot?”_

_“Hanged.”_

_“That’s too bad.”_

Dean took a deep breath. “It's 2014. Plugging some croat is commonplace.” He motioned between them. “Trading words with my fucking clone? That might have freaked them out a little.”

“All right, look,” his past-self began.

“No, you look,” Dean interrupted. “This isn't your time, it's mine. You don't make the decisions, I do. So when I say stay in, you stay in.” Mere hours before his death was _really_ a bad time for Zachariah to have planned this whole shenanigan.

Even though the dude was as green as the color of his young, innocent eyes, Dean could still use another set of hands on deck, so he supposed this wasn’t a complete disaster.

Moreover, this could be a lesson. When he got back to his own time, he could find Cas and not waste a second in realizing his love for the angel who dragged him out of hell. He could fix this. They could be happy somewhere, sometime, and avoid this whole mess.

“All right, man, I'm sorry. Look, I'm not trying to mess you or me, or... _us_ up here.”

Dean’s hand was trembling. It'd been over ten hours since he'd had a drink. If a real doctor looked at him, there would be no doubt in his mind that his liver was failing him.

If the real devil didn’t kill him, his inner devil would.

“I know,” he replied, turning around to pour them each a shot of whiskey. The good thing about drinking with himself was that he didn’t need to ask how he liked it. Since he was sixteen, he preferred good rye, neat. The burn was clean, it went down smooth. It was a cleansing feeling.

Drinking had always felt like being baptized.

Maybe that was why Dean drank so much.

“Well this has just been a really wacky weekend,” his past self said with an exhale while Dean set the glasses on the table between them.

“Tell me about it.”

They toasted and drank, and Dean relished in it, knowing it would probably be his last drink, his last feeling of purity in the eternity of chaos and agony that stretched out before him.

“What was the mission anyway?”

Dean forgot how curious he used to be. Nevertheless, he reached into his duffel and pulled out the Colt.

Past-Dean looked at it in disbelief. “The Colt?”

Nodding, Dean replied, “The Colt.”

“Where was it?”

“Everywhere. They've been running it around.” Presumably, Dean noted. Crowley didn’t actually tell him where the hell it had been. “Took me a long time, but I finally got it. And tonight? Tonight I'm gonna kill the devil.”

Avoiding his past self’s gaze, Dean downed the last of his whiskey with a fleeting notion of triumph pressing at his heart, and promised himself that all of this would be worth it, as long as Castiel was safe.

***

“So that's it. That's the Colt,” Risa said, and Dean’s level of irritation rose tenfold.

He _really_ couldn’t stand her.

Setting his irritation aside, he replied, “If anything can kill Lucifer, this is it,” with an unsaid caveat of, _“Except maybe an angel blade, but we obviously don’t have that because there are no more angels anywhere despite the devil’s intense paranoia which says otherwise.”_

“Right, but have we got anything that can _find_ Lucifer?” Risa asked with an arched eyebrow, an expression Dean learned meant that he must have fucking _breathed_ the wrong way or some shit.

Sure, Dean was never good enough for Risa, who was smart and funny and beautiful and strong as all get-out, but unlike with Cas, Dean didn’t give a shit that she was too good for him.

And unlike Cas, Risa liked shoving her superiority in Dean’s face every chance she got, a little nudge that told Dean behind every move she made, she wanted his position as leader, that she _deserved_ his position as leader.

She would be fucking _thrilled_ to find out Dean was about to kick the bucket, because that meant the camp was all finally all hers to run the way she wanted to run it.

Despite what everyone thought of Dean, the fact she used him for sex repeatedly and then convinced the entire camp that _he_ was the big bag of dicks sleeping around with other people—which he didn’t, it was just a rumor—kind of hurt his feelings.

But fearless leaders weren’t supposed to _have_ feelings, so Dean didn’t say a damn word about it for fear that Cas would be let on to how much Dean still loved him.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked, prodding her to see what she’d be willing to say in front of Cas and other Dean.

“Oh,” other Dean interrupted, “we were in Jane's cabin last night, and apparently, we and Risa have a connection.”

Dean wanted to groan. The shit Chuck came up with to cover Dean’s tracks was always so much worse than the truth. Dean didn’t even _know_ a Jane.

The sad smile and huff of defeat Cas made at the insinuation shattered what was left of Dean’s heart. He clenched his hands into fists and pointedly ignored it, refused to reach out and touch Cas's arm and look at him like he loved him, like he was anything more than one of Dean’s soldiers, because that would make this whole thing so much harder.

He couldn’t let Cas know that he had wanted more than anything over the past two years to shout his love from the top of the fucking watchtower and drown in those beautiful blue eyes every waking second of his life.

“You wanna shut up?” Dean told his other self, and continued, “We don't have to find Lucifer. We know where he is. The demon that we caught last week. He was one of the big guy's entourage. He knew.” Lie. Dean’s nonstop nightmares told him exactly where Lucifer would be, but if he told Risa that, she would call off the whole operation, and then she'd find a way to instill doubt into the minds of the team of people he needed to take with him to make it through the croats they would inevitably run into.

Sure, Dean was the big kahuna of the camp, but Risa had a sharp tongue. She was a snake, and probably a much better leader than Dean had ever been. Before the apocalypse, she’d done something in finance, was some leader of some major bank, and was featured in Forbes as being one of the Forty Under Forty climbing the ranks of the industry in the year to come before the shit hit the fan in a major way.

It settled Dean’s heart a little knowing that the camp would be left in steady hands when he was gone.

“So a demon tells you where Satan's gonna be and you just believe it?” she asked, incredulous.

When it came as a telepathic message straight to his own brain, Dean tended to believe such things. “Oh trust me, he wouldn't lie.”

“And you know this how?” Risa never trusted a word out of Dean’s mouth, and he appreciated her for that.

Except for right now, when she needed to shut the hell up so they could get a move on.

“Our fearless leader, I'm afraid, is all too-well schooled in the art of getting to the truth,” Cas said, sliding so easily back into his sarcastic lilt despite the fact they spent the night prior whispering teary-eyed notions of love to one another.

Dean pointedly avoided acknowledging the pang in his heart hearing those words.  

“Torture?” his past self asked. “Oh, so we're torturing again. Well that's good. Classy.”

It was better than the truth. Cas was taunting him, pressing Dean’s buttons to try to get him to quit this crazy gig and let Lucifer take him instead.

It was immature, and Dean stared at him, a silent plea to not say another word that this whole idea came from a series of bad dreams, that his secret motivation behind all of this was to save Cas an eternity in hell.

It didn’t matter how much Cas felt he deserved to rot in hell. It didn’t matter how much he resented Dean for what he was doing. It didn’t even matter if he was somehow scheming behind his back to take this all away from them, which was a thought Dean couldn’t dismiss because it was exactly what _he_ would do. The fact was, Dean was going to kill the devil and go to hell, and that’s all there was to it.

“What?” Cas asked. “I like past-you.”

Another pang in his chest. Another insinuation that the Dean behind him was better, less broken, so much more valiant and pure than the one standing in front of him, giving his soul so that Cas could live his mortal life in relative peace.

Dean shook himself out of his reverie and pointed to the map where he had circled where they needed to go. “Lucifer is here. I know the block. I know the building.”

Cas eyed the map. “Oh good, it's right in the middle of a hot zone.”

“Crawling with croats, yeah. You saying my plan is reckless?” Dean asked, hiding the smirk behind his glare.

“Are you saying we walk in straight up the driveway past all the demons and the croats and we shoot the devil?” Cas asked.

It wasn’t like there was a choice to be had in the matter. “Yes.”

“Okay, if you don't like reckless, I could use _insouciant_ maybe.”

God, Dean was gonna miss those clever little quips, that brilliant mind behind those brilliant eyes. Even drugged up and grieving, Cas could manage to put butterflies in Dean’s stomach with his big words and exaggerated facial expressions and the way Dean’s clothes draped over his body.  

Even when they were barely speaking, Cas and Dean wore the same clothes. The concept of personal property was a foreign one on the camp. Dean didn’t even remember which items were his anymore.

Regardless, he liked seeing what he knew to be _his_ canvas jacket on Cas’s broad shoulders over top of one of the hand-woven linen shirts that Cas preferred to cotton, sticking with the inane persona of the hippy ideal he adopted with his drug addiction.

“Are you coming?” Dean asked. He wanted the answer to be no. He wanted Cas to be safe at the camp, but he knew that nothing would hold him back from this. Even though he wasn’t an angel anymore, he still had the will of a warrior of God, and no amount of the cold, stern voice Dean used could keep Cas from his side when it came to sacrificing himself for the sake of Cas’s own livelihood.

Cas sighed. “Of course. But why is he?” he asked, gesturing to past-Dean. “I'm mean, he's you five years ago, so if something happens to him, you're gone, right?”

Dean wanted to reply with a sarcastic, _“The only thing that matters is the present, right?”_ but instead opted for, “He’s coming.”

Cas sighed again, and despite Dean's latent animosity toward him that had developed slowly over the past five years, he was still intensely grateful for every single second he got to be in the same room as him, every brief glance he could look into those eyes he loved so much, every fleeting moment ticking down to zero. “Okay,” he told Dean, “We'll get the grunts moving.”

“We're loaded and on the road by midnight,” Dean replied as Cas and Risa left the cabin.

As soon as they were gone, his past self was quick to inquire, “Why _are_ you taking me?”

"Relax. You're gonna be fine." Lie. Dean didn't really give a shit if his past self would be fine, because his present self was going to the ultimate slammer and there was nothing anyone could do about it. "Zach's looking after you, right?" Knowing Zachariah, he was probably keeping good tabs on Dean.

If Dean could only _find_ the bastard, he could offer him up to Lucifer and they could avoid this whole mess, but Dean guessed that the coward was hiding out on his little cloud playing Ghost of Future Past.

"No that's not what I mean. I want to know what's going on."

Dean sighed, and decided to offer up a fraction of his real motivations. "Yeah, okay. You're coming because I want you to see something. I want you to see our brother."  

"Sam? I thought he was dead."

Dean _wished_ he was dead. It was a much better fate than the one he was actually living.

"Sam didn't die in Detroit," Dean replied. "He said yes."

"Yes? Wait. You mean–"

Dean nodded and huffed a mirthless laugh. "That's right. The big yes. To the devil. Lucifer's wearing him to the prom."

"Why did he do that?" past-Dean asked.

 _Because he's a fucking moron._ "I wish I knew. But now I don't even have a choice. It's in him and it's not getting out. And we've gotta kill him, Dean. And you need to see it. The whole damn thing. How bad it gets so you can do it different." Dean scrubbed a hand over his face and stared into his own eyes, searching them, looking into the infinite, meaningless abyss of compassion he used to have. "I was cocky. Never actually thought I'd lose. But I was wrong." His voice cracked as he concluded, "Dean, I was _wrong_. I'm begging you, man, you need to do it different."

Dean bit his tongue to avoid adding, _"So you can be happy."_

***

Of fucking _course_ it was a sanatorium.

Lucifer's sense of humor was not lost on Dean, because the fucker tortured him mentally for _years_ in his dreams, making him fear sleeping hours, fear waking hours, fear the present, fear the future.

A sanatorium was only fitting for the place Dean died, given how unraveled he'd become over the past five years, pointed out to him so thoroughly by the man at his side, his exact duplicate who did not yet have the memories of merciless slaughter, of rampant infection, of making love to the only person who mattered on this fucking planet anymore.

Dean was exactly where he belonged.

And of fucking _course,_ his past self had to voice his dissent, even though the clock was ticking down.

"They cleared a path for us, that means this is–"

"–a trap. Exactly."

"You mean you're gonna feed your friends into a meat grinder?" After a brief pause, recognition flickered across his features, the only sign that he'd picked up on what was really happening. "Cas too? You would use their deaths as a diversion. Oh man, something is broken in you. You're making decisions I would never make. I wouldn't sacrifice my friends."

"You're right. _You_ wouldn't. It's one of the main reasons we're in this mess, actually."

Dean couldn't tell him the truth. He couldn't tell him that Crowley and his goons had cleared out all the croats and were waiting to be ambushed, not defending themselves to the ensuing machinegun fire. He'd had the misfortune of needing to call on Crowley an hour ago to go over The Plan, and considered himself lucky that the demon went along with the idea. 

For some reason, his gut instinct was to trust Crowley to hold to his word.

He needed to do whatever it took to convince his past-self to not become who he was today. He needed Dean to understand that everything needed to be done differently, opposite from all the choices he'd made.

"These people count on you. They trust you."

"They trust me to kill the devil and to save the world." He stopped himself from adding, _"and the love of your fucking life,"_ and instead said,  "And that's exactly what I'm gonna do."

"No. Not like this you're not. I'm not gonna let you," past-Dean replied with a stern shake of his head.

Dean sighed inwardly. Plan A went out the window, and he lost patience with the idiotic version of himself who _always_ put up a fuss about everything, goodie-fucking-two-shoes that he was. "Oh really?" he asked, and cold-cocked him across the jaw.

***

Dean's heart pounded in his chest as he stared at the face of his brother, with someone else's gaze staring back at him, malicious, merciless, the definition of evil.

He smirked at him, and Dean saw every little smile Sam had ever given him flash before his eyes, from the chubby-faced baby who learned to read when he was four; to the gangly, awkward teenager who pushed Dean away when he ruffled his floppy hair; to the cackle of the man he'd become, when Dean would make him laugh at diners across the US, which all faded into similarity after a while, so that all Dean could remember about any of them was what they'd talked about while they were there.

Dean did not realize until this very moment how much he _missed_ his brother.

"Sam," he whispered, staring in awe, in person, in real life at the man in white in front of him.

"Not quite," Lucifer replied, smile widening and dimples deepening.

It was the beginning of every conversation they'd had in Dean's dreams over the past two years.

Dean swallowed and his hand trembled, itching to pull out his flask and take a swig, clear his mind which reeled faster and faster, swirling with memories he swore he'd forgotten.

He thought it was a dumb cliché, seeing one's life flash before their eyes right before they died.

But here Dean was, thinking about Christmases and Halloweens and birthdays and days that didn't even matter but stuck out in his mind anyway, random thoughts he'd had, women he'd slept with, monsters he'd killed, the faces of every poor potentially infected person he shot between the eyes.

"Where's the angel, Dean?" Lucifer asked.

Dean shook his head. "Are you crazy? There is no angel, man! I looked everywhere! They're gone. All of them. They're locked away. They're not _listening anymore_. I don't know why you can't just leave me alone!" he screamed, tears welling in his eyes at the _pointlessness_ of all of this.

Lucifer huffed a laugh and took a step toward him. He tilted his head and replied, "You didn't look hard enough. He's been," Lucifer lifted his hand to rub his nose, "under your nose this entire time. You were too busy with your distraction to notice, though."

"Cas? No way. I watched Cas almost die from an overdose... _multiple times_. If there were any grace left in him, he wouldn't be nearly as fucked up as he is." Dean's voice was cracking, and despite his trembling hands, he lifted the Colt to point at the devil.

"I'm not talking about Cas, Dean." He walked toward Dean until the gun hit his lapel, like every dream Dean had thus far, which for the first time was bereft of the red rose.

"Then who the fuck are you talking about and why the hell can't you deal with it yourself? If you didn't notice, I'm not really partial to anyone but Cas, and if I were, I wouldn't be so fucking willing to kill them at the slightest chance they got infected."

Lucifer continued smiling, triumph glittering in his eyes. "Because I wanted you to handle it. And you failed. So now you have to pay, and so does your little ragdoll drug addict boyfriend." His smile widened into a manic grin. "And your brother."

Dean's gaped and his breath caught in his throat. "You wouldn't."

Lifting his hand to his temple, Lucifer added, "He's fighting, you know. Right now, he's screaming at me. He's trying to push me away, take control. He's weak though." He looked off in the distance for a moment before focusing on Dean again and concluding with a small furrow of his brow, "It's sad, really."

Through gritted teeth, Dean said, "Give me my brother back or I'll shoot."

Lucifer threw his head back and laughed, then lowered his gaze back to Dean to reply, "Your little toy gun can't hurt me, Dean. I'm invincible." He grabbed the gun from Dean's grasp and threw it on the ground, then took a step into Dean's space and held him by the throat. He leaned in and whispered, "But you're not."

He threw Dean on the ground and pressed his foot to Dean's neck while Dean reached vainly for the Colt.

"You're going to pay for this, Dean. Your humanity _disgusts_ me. The humanity of my brother disgusts me. The humanity of _your_ brother disgusts me. I'm going to kill you right now, and then I'm going to kill Castiel, and then when I'm finally done with your brother, I'm going to kill him too. And you'll all rest in hell, in the pit I've been trapped in for centuries. You'll see what I saw. You'll do what I did. You'll feel how I felt. And then you'll see that there's no difference between us, Dean. There is no reason my Father should have loved you more than me, his precious little apes, if you are capable of what I am capable of."

Dean grasped frantically at the Colt, barely out of his reach, unable to speak as Lucifer slowly put more pressure onto his neck.

"When humanity, my Father's most prized creation, is wiped from the face of the earth, he will see that humans are _vile_ , that they are _filthy, greedy, lying_ creatures, unworthy of his affection. Do you want to know what the virus is, Dean? Why I created it? The Croatoan virus is merely an erasure of a human's soul. It's what people become when they have no divinity to guide them. I haven't destroyed the world, Dean. I merely planted a seed." A low laugh rumbled in his throat. After a pause, he concluded, "And you did the rest."

Past-Dean ran into the garden, and looked at the scene in front of him in shock.

Dean pleaded with him with his eyes to _save Cas_ , and hoped to hell he got the message.

He braced himself for what lay ahead of him, and closed his eyes. He imagined his sphere, and Cas's smiling face, and for some reason, he thought of that moment he looked at Cas's profile underneath the makeshift tent as it rained, shadows of tiny rivers cast on his face as he looked upward, resting in the blissful afterglow of their first time together. Dean thought of how happy Cas had looked, about how hard he had fought for goodness in a time of such sorrow, how pained and powerless he was when he'd lost his grace, how his mind unraveled slowly over time like Dean's, until they were both raw nerves strung tight across the bloodied harp that Lucifer played.

He wanted the Dean watching them to do it differently.

The Dean of today had no regrets, though, because all that mattered was the present, and in this moment, as a tear fell across the bridge of his nose, he felt peace.

The eye of the storm was infinite.

But the storm itself was finally over. 


	10. Epilogue, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agh I'm so mad at myself for not finishing this chapter. I thought I could do it all in one but then it would be like a single 10k word chapter of "epilogue" and that would be unbearable amounts of feels, so I'm splitting it in two.
> 
> My sincerest apologies for projecting my personal amphetamine problem plus existential crisis on endverse!Cas. I just really relate to him I guess. So enjoy some poststructural, existential, philosophical conundrums and rampant symbolism.
> 
> If you're curious who I envision, [this is Jim](http://i1.wp.com/lifethefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Dane-DeHaan.jpg).
> 
> (Please note, there's not a lot of action or dialogue in this chapter because Cas is so wrapped up in his own head that he doesn't see or remember things the same way Dean does. It may seem rushed in comparison to the rest of the fic, but I assure you it's intentional.)

**2009**

Falling hurt Castiel in every meaning of the word.

It hurt him physically, forcing him to become accustomed to the aches and pains of everyday human life. It hurt him emotionally, because he was so... _powerless_. It hurt him mentally, looking through human eyes at the world in a way he wasn't accustomed. It hurt him spiritually, because he'd never lived without his grace, and he was unsure if his grace took his soul along with it.

When— to borrow a phrase from Dean— the shit hit the fan, finding Dean felt like his prayers had been answered.

Even though such a thing was absurd, because Cas learned that no one was listening anyway.

Cas had been so hopeful for Dean, that he would step up and lead, that he would fix the mess they were in.

But Dean was just as broken and powerless as Cas.

Instead, Castiel began putting his faith in the goddess Amphetamine and all her pseudo-power glory.

Speed didn't give Cas power, but it was the closest thing he could find to the feel of heaven running through his veins. It didn't make him smarter or stronger or provide him with the ability to smite, but it gave him spikes where he was convinced he was still an angel.

The resulting crash, however, felt like falling all over again. Every time. Cas chased his high with a fervor and then fell back down the steep mountain of his mania into the valley of his depression.

But that was what the weed was for. It dulled the edges of his ferocious lady Amphetamine, made the world seem softer, so that when he crashed, he had soft down pillows to break his fall.

He began needing speed as much as he needed Dean.

If speed was the sky, and weed was the ground, Dean was right at eye-level with him, whiskey in one hand and a gun in the other, looking at Cas like nothing had changed. He still loved Cas with the same intensity he always had.

And for that, Cas was grateful.

**2010**

It wasn't long before the psychosis began.

Everything was _wrong._

It started when Cas examined his fingers, and he realized he had no fingerprints.

Jimmy Novak had obviously had fingerprints at some point.

But Castiel, having fallen from earth, tilted his head and examined his hands, the tiny wrinkles of his knuckles, like swirls of galaxies in the cosmos, the freckles and moles up his arm, the small diagonal scar that Jimmy had gotten from a bicycle accident when he was eleven.

All of that existed, like Jimmy had existed, like Castiel had existed within him.

When he slowly turned his hands over, though, he trailed his eyes up the lines of his palm, up the knuckles of his fingers, and stared at his fingertips.

The infinitesimal tiny ridges that should have been at the very tops of his hands were smooth.

His single unique and identifying physical feature as a human being did not exist.

So, Castiel began convincing himself, he must not exist either.

If Cas's physical body was not real, he reasoned, then he was just a consciousness observing his surroundings. He was a being of sentience only. A vessel, not for grace, but for the consumption of an environment that, like him, did not exist.

And then he met Jim.

Jim liked to make things with his hands. He was Castiel's antithesis: if Cas was meant to consume, Jim was meant to create. They were a balance, a post-apocalyptic yin and yang. His icy blue eyes and wide, shy smile; his careful words and quiet indifference; his understanding of complex philosophical and religious ideals in a way that Dean had never been interested in is what drew Cas to him to begin with.

He also ran a surprisingly efficient drug ring in the camp, in addition to his architectural duties.  

Castiel was enamored by Jim in much the way humans become enamored with certain inanimate objects, like trinkets or toys. He felt a kind of sentimentality toward Jim, but deep in his heart he found he just didn't care about the young man with the shy smile and the ability to create.

He was a companion to Cas. A means to an end. A tool to be used.

So Cas used him.

**2011**

After the overdose, Dean became Cas's shadow.

He was so fucking _needy_.

Castiel wouldn't hesitate to admit that he did, in fact, _need_ Dean, but he also didn't cling to him for dear life like Dean clung to him.

The physical comfort was nice, but Cas had turned into a man who required his alone time, who recharged by retreating into his own mind.

Dean constantly touching him and kissing him and whispering in his ear just reminded Cas how _wrong_ everything really was, because Dean just wasn't _like_ that.

It unnerved Cas to think of anyone seeing him with such an acute eye as Dean did. Cas did not like to be consumed, because he himself was that which consumed. He was the camera of their reality. He was the machine.

People should not love machines, Cas reasoned, even though Dean always had an unhealthy attachment to his car.

Maybe that was why they got along so well. Cas was like a device, and Dean liked fixing things.

But Cas didn't want to be fixed. He wanted to suffer. He reveled in his apathy, his aloneness, his emptiness, and his suffering. He enjoyed getting high and fucking and laughing and crying and pushing himself to his limits constantly, just to see how far his body could take him.

He wanted to see what happened when he devoured everything.

Then Dean built him a home outside of his own mind; a physical place to put his thoughts to rest so that he himself could finally rest.

And Cas was grateful, both for a place to lay his head, and the Om around his neck that served as an anchor steadying him on solid ground.

In turn, he taught Dean how to make a home of his own mind.

It was a precarious balance between the three of them: Jim the creator, Dean the fixer, and Cas the consumer, but together, they were the precious cycle of the way the universe turned.

Maybe, Cas reasoned, that was why they were in this world of wrongness. They were meant to _be_ the world for which their environment acted _within_ them, instead of the other way around.

They were tools for a bigger purpose.

They did not exist.

***

Dean was too good at fixing Cas. Cas liked his broken pieces. He liked being the jagged remnants of a broken machine.

It was what he was born to do: be a functioning piece in a grander purpose. He was built to serve his Father, aid his brethren, fight the good fight.

But he failed at that, and he took pleasure in his punishment.

As the days and months and years passed, he began looking outward for the first time, seeing his surroundings and the makeshift life Dean had carefully constructed for the masses which he singlehandedly protected.

For the first time, instead of maniacally reveling in his destruction, Cas felt... _guilt_.

He did not deserve the warm affection of Dean Winchester, who woke him up with soft kisses and smiles pressed to the back of his neck, who found his ticklish spots and would prod them when Cas began waxing philosophical, who pulled Cas out of his own mind in much the way Cas had long ago pulled him out of hell.

Cas didn't deserve to be pulled out of hell.

His lack of fingerprints was proof of that. His new function was to feel pain. To consume pain. To become pain.

And Dean was blissful, cooling relief from that.

Cas then decided to destroy Dean too, so that he could continue destroying himself.

***

_"THIS IS YOUR FAULT. YOU DID THIS TO ME, CASTIEL. YOU MADE ME LIKE THIS."_

Cas rubbed Dean's back and remained silent as Dean choked out strings of blood onto the frozen grass below them.

It was absolutely Cas's fault. Cas took ownership of that. He pushed Dean like he pushed himself, curious how far Dean could go before he snapped, like Dean was merely an extension of himself.

It was so rare anyone called him _Castiel_ that he'd almost forgotten it was his name.

Castiel. The angel of Thursdays. A single day in a cyclical rotation. A span of hours from start to finish. A gear in the great machine of life.

A small part of a greater whole.

As Dean sobbed into the grass and gasped for breath, Castiel realized that the greater whole was right in front of him, that Dean was the glue that held him together, and Cas was the thing that kept Dean running.

They were homeostasis. Synergy. Balance. Active and passive. Internal and external. Black and white.

Without Cas, Dean would perish. Without Dean, Cas would perish. They needed each other.

They loved each other.

_"Please, Cas. Please kill me.”_

As Dean passed out on the grass, a moment of intense clarity hit Castiel, and for the first time in a long time, he simply _felt_.

He finally reached the edge, hit rock bottom, found the border of his carefully constructed apathy.

He _couldn't lose Dean_.

Heart hammering in his chest of its own accord for once instead of being prompted by drugs, Cas rolled Dean over.

His lips were blue. He was barely breathing. His eyes had rolled into the back of his head.

Cas lifted him in a feat of strength he didn't think he still had in him, and carried him back to his cabin, where he carefully placed him under the covers and curled up next to him, keeping him warm.

He pressed kisses to his neck and shoulders, and whispered, "Don't leave me, Dean. Not again. This isn't what you're meant to do. You're meant to _fix_ things. You can't break yourself. There's no one else who can fix you."

Dean began seizing violently, and Cas held him close, forehead pressed to his cold skin, and rocked him, muttering, _"Please don't break. Please don't break. Please don't break."_

After several minutes, the bead curtain shifted and Cas heard soft footsteps enter the cabin. "What's going on?"

Cas didn't look up at Jim. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut and mumbled, "Something's wrong with Dean."

Jim rushed over, and knelt by the bed, then lifted each of Dean's eyelids to look at his eyes. "Go get Abernathy."

"I don't know where he—"

"I said _go_ , Cas!" Jim shouted.

Cas scrambled out of bed, terrified and trembling, and left the cabin to find the doctor. Thankfully, he was sitting outside in a lawn chair, smoking one of Cas's joints, and Cas called him over to come see Dean.

When they ran back to the cabin, bead curtain rattling wildly behind them, Cas rushed to the bed.

Dean was... fine.

He was even snoring softly.

Cas touched his forehead, and felt the warmth of his soft skin. He trailed his hands down Dean's face and across his lips. "What happened?" he asked in awe.

Jim shrugged. "I don't know. One minute he looked like he was about to kick the bucket, and the next, he was fine."

Cas stared at Jim for a long time, head tilted and eyes narrowed. "And you had nothing to do with this?"

Jim put his hands in his pockets and shook his head. "I'm just an architect, man. I know buildings, not people."

"Thank you, Jim, for watching over him." Cas turned to the doctor, "And thank you, Dr. Abernathy for coming on such short notice. I'll stay here with him in case there are any further issues."

They both nodded and bid their goodbyes, leaving Cas alone with an enigmatically healthy alcoholic, who was resting peacefully in his bed.

Cas got undressed and slid into bed with Dean, facing him and staring at his divine features. He ran his printless fingertips over his skin and watched him sleep, realizing that even if he didn't exist, and none of this world was real, it was irrelevant to the immense love he felt for the man in his arms.

Cas fell asleep shortly thereafter, feeling at peace for the first time since he fell.

**2012**

Castiel was happy for months. He was with Dean, down to popping Adderall a couple times a day. He worked hard and went on missions. He tried to do good.

And most importantly, he didn't retreat inside his own head anymore.

Everything was fine until that day in the meadow. Cas didn't know what happened. One minute, they were outside, in love, relaxed and happy, and the next moment, Dean woke up and bolted back to camp.

Nothing was the same after that.

He accused Cas of being an angel, of hiding a blade from him, hiding his grace. No matter what Cas told him on the matter, Dean insisted Cas was something he wasn't.

Dean shoved him away, found Risa, and never looked back.

So Cas took solace in that hands that built, the creator of spaces and structures, the small smile that Cas grew to become fond of. He and Jim would sit cross-legged on the bed and talk through the night. They'd smoke together and Jim would listen to Cas's speed-fueled manic rants, enrapt and gleeful.

Cas enjoyed Jim's company.

But Jim was no Dean.

**2013**

Cas broke his foot, and he was back to square one, feeling pitiful and powerless.

Thankfully, Jim introduced him to painkillers, then cocaine, and a myriad of other psychotropics and hallucinogenics and uppers and downers and pills and powders, trying to find anything that would help Cas feel relief, because Jim could never manage to fix Cas.

Only Dean could do that.

Cas was happy to try any and all of them, because the dichotomy of pain and euphoria felt so much better than the numb dysthymia that constantly enveloped him.

**2014**

Something was _wrong_.

More than the world was wrong. More than Cas was wrong. Something very big was very wrong, and Cas couldn't put his finger on it.

For months, he had trouble breathing. He had trouble speaking or thinking or moving.

He was drowning in this feeling of _wrongness_ , this cloud that settled over them, about to burst in fury.

When Dean came into Cas's cabin one night, eyes glossy and red-rimmed, looking terrified and alone and _small_ , Cas let go of his animosity, because he knew that whatever this feeling of wrongness was, it was about to come to a head.

Cas's body, so used to Dean being an extension of himself, moved of its own volition when he pulled Dean in for a kiss during their last meditation.

Cas didn't know what would happen that would make it their last, but he knew in his heart that it was.

"What big thing is about to happen?" Cas asked, frantic, heart close to leaping out of his chest.

"I can't... I can't tell you that," Dean replied.

"Does it have to do with Lucifer? Your dreams? Dean, you need to tell me. This is important."

_No no no no no no no no._

The cloud forming overhead started making sense. Cas put the pieces of the puzzle together: the paranoia about Lucifer looking for them, Cas being an angel, being pushed away, the dreadful feeling welling in his gut.

What, Cas asked himself, did Dean always do when he was desperate?

He sacrificed himself.

Every time, he would give himself up to save some inane ideal, because he could fix everything in the world but himself. He had no self. No survivalist instincts. Like the cabin around them, he existed outside of himself, and never within.

Dean had made a deal.

"Did you make a deal?" Cas didn't need to ask, he already knew the answer, but he needed confirmation.

"How did you..."

"I'm high, Dean. Not blind. _Now please tell me what's going on."_

The last piece of the puzzle was figuring out what, or who, Dean was sacrificing himself for.

"I did it because I love you," Dean whispered, shoulders slumped.

It was Cas. He was doing this for Cas.

If Dean weren't going to die soon, Cas could have fucking _killed_ him for being such an idiot.

He would think of a plan to save Dean later. For now, he had a teary-eyed fearless leader in his hands who looked at him like his fallen angel was his whole world.

And maybe Cas was, if Dean was willing to rot in hell for him.

Cas could not deny Dean anything. He never had and he never would. So they touched and kissed and spoke of one another's love like blissful fools until the sun rose.

Like the last night of 2011, the beginning of the eye of the storm, Castiel watched Dean fall asleep, relaxed and warm and happy, for what Cas hoped wouldn't be the last time.


	11. Epilogue, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you strong enough to handle this fic as a WIP, I commend you. If you ever want to meet up, I'll buy you a drink.
> 
> I appreciate all the wonderful feedback and support I've gotten on this fic. I love you all, and I hope I did the endverse justice for you.

_And every day, it's changed since then_   
_In every way, I've changed since then_   
_And every day, it's changed since then_   
_In every way, I've changed since then_

_Driven outside_   
_I've driven you_   
_Driven outside_   
_I've driven you_

***

Cas bolted awake late the next morning, heart pounding and hands shaking. He looked over to see a still-sleeping Dean curled up by his side.

Jim. It had to be Jim. There was no one else it could be.

It explained everything: how he never got high no matter how much he took, never himself overdosed, never slept, rarely ate, knew things he had no way of knowing. Cas chalked it up to his own inability to correctly perceive his environment, or maybe it was just that he never really paid that much attention to Jim in the first place, but now it all made sense.

When Dean almost died, Cas left him alone with Jim, just for a moment, and when he came back, Dean had been fine. The next day, he began functioning like a normal person, like one whose mind hadn't been ripped apart by endless trauma.

Like someone who had been healed.

Jim was an angel.

But that knowledge was too little, too late.

If Cas had only gotten out of his own head to look around at what was really going on, he could have fixed this long ago. He could have _listened_ to Dean's frantic raging about Lucifer. He could have prevented all of this from ever happening.

He buried his face in his hands and groaned, heart twisting in his chest with dread and sorrow.

This was all his fault.

After finding his center and calming down, reminding himself that nothing existed or mattered except for his love of Dean, Cas leaned down to kiss his forehead, then rolled out of bed.

Dean furrowed his brow and shifted onto the spot where Cas had just been, unconsciously looking for him in his sleep.

It was appallingly moronic that Dean had spent the better part of two years pushing Cas away from him, when they could have had _this_ every morning of their lives. They could have had each other.

But that was what happened when two people who were mere shards of their former selves fell in love.

All they knew how to do was cause pain to one another.

He stared down at Dean for a brief moment before throwing on a shirt and pants, and heading out to find Charlie.

***

He found her doing some electrical work in one of the larger barracks.

She smiled when she saw him approach, and shifted her headphones off her ears. "Hey Cas, what's up?"

"I need you to help me with something."

"Always so direct. I like that about you," she said with a smile.

Cas disregarded her passive-aggressive jab. "I need you to make sure Jim doesn't leave the camp under any circumstances today. Can you do that?"

Charlie huffed a laugh, and replied, "The guy never leaves the tower, let alone the camp. Plus it's only," she looked at the watch on her wrist, "noon. He's not gonna emerge from his nest for another few hours."

Trying to keep the urgency out of his voice, Cas said, "I have reason to believe something... big is going to happen soon. I think he might try to leave. Under no circumstance should you let him out of your sight. If you keep an eye on him, he can't disappear."

"Like the angels?" she asked.

Cas's breath caught in his throat. "How did you..."

"Weeping angels, Cas. As in _Doctor Who_." She turned back to her work and clipped another wire, adding, "You should really borrow my DVDs sometime, I think you'd..." She looked back at Cas, but he was already walking away. "...like them," she muttered to herself, followed by, " _Ooookay_ then. That was weird. And that's saying something, because I'm surviving the goddamn zombie apocalypse."

***

Apparently there were two Deans.

Cas supressed his automatic reaction to this fact, because it involved an activity that the 2009 version of himself would never likely do.

The present version of himself probably wouldn't be into it either, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, having past-Dean around was just further evidence that something major was going on, celestial disturbances in the careful balance of their non-reality.

Everything was beginning to make sense, but Cas didn't have all the pieces yet to be able to put them together, and he was running out of time to gather them.

When someone dropped the name _Jane_ , Cas almost lost it. Years of blatant, public homoerotic affection toward one another— Dean even fucked Cas _in front of a goddamn audience_ — and still everyone at the camp refused to believe that the strong, hypermasculine Dean Winchester, leader extraordinaire, was anything but completely heterosexual.

When Cas told Dean his plan was reckless— and Dean's slight smirk when he opted for _insouciant_ was not lost on him, because no matter what was going on around them, they always knew what to do or say to make each other smile— what Cas was really saying was, _"We need to work together to get you out of this mess, or, hey, why not just... let it go completely? There are two versions of yourself here and I'm sure that could make for a fun evening."_

Instead, when Dean asked if Cas would be coming along, Cas sighed and said, "Of course."

He couldn't let Dean do this alone, when there was the smallest chance that Cas could stop it from happening at all.

***

After Cas had rounded up the grunts, he volunteered to drive with past-Dean to get a better scope of the situation.

Before he hopped in the truck, though, present-day Dean pulled him aside. "I gotta talk to you."

He was shaking again, like he always did when it had been too long since he'd had a drink, and Cas, despite his own addictions, was always worried about him and the toll of his alcoholism.

Dean pulled him behind one of the large army vehicles, covered in obscene graffiti, and which, when running, was always blaring pop hits from the sixties.

They were alone, possibly for the last time, and they stared at each other in silence. Cas knew that there were no words to be said, that there were no words that _could_ be said which would console them at this moment.

Dean looked down and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head, and Cas reached out to him, squeezed his arm, taking a step closer.

It was all so fragile, the world they lived in; their perception of reality, constantly altered by intoxicants; their minds and bodies and hearts.

The only thing steady was the tie that bound them together, their unfailing love for one another in the face of the chaos perpetually swirling around them.

Even when they were apart, they were together. They were always together, and always would be, regardless of physical presence.

The thought gave Cas hope.

But Dean was still afraid. The alcoholism made him tremble, but his fear made him shake, breath uneven and hand running through his hair, and at last he reached out to Cas to pull him into a tight embrace, burying his face in the crook of Cas's neck.

Cas didn't rub his back or attempt to console him. It would have done a disservice to the situation, to feel any amount of levity in the face of sure death.

Instead, Cas held him in return, breathed him in, pressed fervent kisses to his head and embraced him so tightly, he thought their bodies would finally break.

Dean pulled away and crushed their lips together, holding Cas's face in his hands.

For once, he didn't taste like whiskey. He tasted like toothpaste and smelled like aftershave, because only Dean Winchester would treat his death like a formal event. He couldn't be bothered to run a comb through his hair before giving a speech in front of the entire camp, but when faced with his own mortality, of course Dean would want to be at his best.

The kiss was deep and desperate and frantic. They devoured each other like their respective addictions, using the last ounces of one another to reach their final and highest highs before dropping down to their lowest lows.

Cas forced himself to pay attention, to take in every minute detail of this moment: the worn canvas under his printless fingertips; the strong, functional muscle rippling underneath the fabric; the ragged breaths between each other as they came up for air for just fractions of seconds before continuing again; the grasping and pulling and feeling of their bodies together; the sharp pain of the gun strapped to Dean's thigh jutting into Cas's, a reminder of their surroundings which at this moment, Cas couldn't hate, because their environment was what brought them together to begin with. Without it, Dean would still be the man waiting for him in his truck, always looking and never touching. Never letting himself have what he wanted because he'd never known the feeling of rock bottom until he lost his brother.

Their love was a desperate love, a love built from necessity.

Cas felt a drop of moisture on his cheek, and he did not know whose tears they were.

When Dean finally broke away, he rested their foreheads together and closed his eyes, jaw clenched, hands still pressed to the sides of Cas's neck.

"You're gonna be okay," Dean whispered, then he pulled away to meet Cas's gaze. He searched his face, and, chin trembling, concluded, "It's not gonna seem like it, but I promise, you'll be okay."

"It's not myself I'm worried about, Dean," Cas replied, voice steady despite his discontent.

Dean kissed him again, this time soft and quick and gentle, then dropped his hands and nodded, "I know. But this is just the hand we've been dealt, Cas."

Cas furrowed his brow. "But what if we'd been dealt multiple hands and had the ability to choose which one we played?"

Dean huffed a laugh, and his lips twisted into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Then I sure as hell wouldn't have chosen this one."

"Exactly, Dean. That's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time." He pointed to the truck. "That's why a separate iteration of you was sent to us. Do you remember ever time-traveling to a post-apocalyptic future?"

"No."

"Then time has _split_. Can't you see? Can't you see everything spreading out in front of you? This is bigger than us. We're tools used in a grander machine. We function beyond ourselves."

Dean shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about, Cas."

Cas took his wrist and pulled his hand up to examine Dean's fingers, then turned his palm so that Dean could see. "Where are your fingerprints, Dean?"

Dean zeroed in on his fingers, and whispered in awe, "Well I'll be damned."

"Exactly, Dean. You're damned. I'm damned. We're all damned, because this world we're living in _is not real_." Cas paused and motioned between them. " _We_ are not real."

"Then what is?"

Still holding Dean's wrist, Cas pressed Dean's hand to his chest, securing it over his heart. "This is real. Our love is real. Beyond space and time and consciousness, the love we have is the ground beneath our feet. It is the only thing that does not need to be observed in order to exist."

Dean stared at his hand, wide-eyed and confused. "You know I don't understand any of your philosophical mumbo jumbo, man."

Cas pulled Dean's hand up and kissed each one of his fingertips, then said, "You don't need to understand it, Dean. You just need to feel it."

Dean caressed the side of Cas's face, and nodded. "No matter if I live or die here, we'll be together somewhere, is what you're saying."

Cas smiled, and replied, "That's exactly what I'm saying."

After pulling him in for one last kiss, Dean whispered, hovering over Cas's lips, "I love you, Cas."

 "I love you too, Dean."

***

Cas should have never agreed to let Dean "meet them around back," because he never showed.

There were a dozen demons and several dozen croats. The demons and humans wiped out the croats, then the humans attacked the demons, who stood there while machinegun fire destroyed their physical bodies which had no bearing on their demonic possession at all.

When Cas finally figured out what Dean meant by, _"You'll be okay_ , _"_ it was too late.

He ran into the courtyard. There was no Lucifer and no past-Dean.

There was only the crumpled, dead body of the love of his life lying in a heap on the ground.

Despite the steadiness in Cas's knowledge that they were together, if in no other world than the one past-Dean came from, he was not prepared for the sight in front of him.

He sank to his knees, jaw open in a tortured grimace as he rolled Dean onto his back and held his face in his hands.

His vision blurred with tears that welled up into his eyes and began cascading down his face. Voice quiet and broken, he asked, "Dean?"

When he got no answer, he asked again, shaking hands hesitantly touching his neck, "Dean?"

There was no fluttering pulse underneath his fingers, no rise and fall of a chest underneath his palms.

Dean Winchester, Castiel's savior, his light, his love, the only thing in this terrible world that mattered, was dead.

Cas folded, hands gripping Dean's jacket as he pressed his forehead to Dean's chest, Om necklace falling out of his shirt and hitting his chin, sobs wracking his body. He couldn't breathe through them. He was drowning in his tears and his sorrow, his remorse and his regret.

The past five years had not been Cas's punishment.

This was.

Castiel did not know pain before this moment. He had not yet felt the anguish of losing the only grounding force in his sad life, the only thing keeping him floating up to a heaven that would no longer take him, only to be dismissed and fall back down to hell.

The sky above them cracked and thundered, and heavy rain began to fall.

Cas lay on Dean's chest, weeping as the fight went on above them, ceaseless bullets making holes in beings who couldn't even feel it.

Taking a deep breath, Cas lifted his head, and avoided looking into the empty, lifeless green eyes that stared into oblivion.

He knew what he had to do.

Like the last night of 2011, Cas picked Dean up, and carried him away.

***

Cas thumbed over the engraving on the flask as he pulled up to the river and put the truck in park.

He scanned around for croats, but the place seemed at peace.

Cas refused to give Dean a hunter's burial. They were no longer hunters. Dean was no longer a gun, cocked and ready to fire. He was a shield. He was a protector of innocents.

He was not made of fire, so there was no reason he had to burn more than his soul already would.

Cas shoved the flask— still full, which was a rarity— into his breast pocket, and climbed out of the truck to circle around to the bed and let down the tailgate.

He wondered briefly if the tarp which covered Dean's body was the same tarp under which they'd first kissed.

Hesitating as he caught his breath, which had gotten stuck in his chest at the thought, he uncovered Dean's body and pulled him out of the truck, cradling him in his arms as he waded into the river, singing softly a hymn he remembered from long ago:

_When peace like a river attendeth my way,_   
_when sorrows like sea billows roll;_   
_whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,_   
_"It is well, it is well with my soul."_

_Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,_   
_let this blest assurance control:_   
_that Christ has regarded my helpless estate,_   
_and has shed his own blood for my soul._

The river raged against Cas's body, but he stood firm, silt grazing his bare feet.

He waded until the water was waist deep and threatened to carry Dean away, but Cas held onto him, singing hymnal praises that no longer applied to them in hopes that they would help Dean find peace wherever his soul resided.

He stopped, and gazed at Dean's face one last time, hesitating.

Castiel was not a man of the cloth. Even as an angel, he was a mere soldier, a tiny gear in a bigger machine which itself served no real purpose.

He leaned down and kissed Dean's forehead, now cold. He kissed each of his eyelids, and his nose, and each of his cheeks, and lastly, his lips, which he lingered on for a long moment as tears fell down his face.

Dean had not been a man of many words, so Castiel kept his eulogy short:

"The storm is over now, Dean. Our story has ended."

Then he let go, and the current swept his love away.

He pulled the flask from his pocket, uncapped it, and raised it in Dean's direction, then brought it to his lips to drink.

***

There was one more item left on Cas's to do list.

By the time he made it back to camp, he had realized that the thing which he ignored more than everything else, his environment, was the sole catalyst of his affections for Dean.

If this world did not exist, then Dean would never have ranted about soap operas and fitting into boxes, would have never given up on upholding his strict ideologies on romantic distance, would have never told Cas every day that he loved him.

So Cas had to become that catalyst instead.

He needed to find Jim.

First, he looked in his own cabin, where Jim often waited for him.

It was empty and cold, bereft of the loving warmth that Dean had instilled in it.

Before he turned to leave, a crumpled piece of paper near the bed caught his attention.

He walked over and picked it up, then smoothed away the wrinkles.

Recognizing Dean's writing immediately, he read the note in trembling hands:

_You picked me up (again)._   
_You opened me._   
_Thank you for that._

Cas turned it over. Another note read:

_Meet me in the meadow exactly one year from today._   
_I don't know how. We'll find a way._   
_We always do._   
_Love, DW_

Cas nodded at the paper, chin trembling, and took a deep breath, not letting the tears threaten to return. He folded the note neatly, then slid it into his pocket next to Dean's flask.

***

Jim wasn't in his bedroom, either, but the Christmas lights that adorned the low ceiling were still on.

Cas took the opportunity to ransack the place, pulling out all the covers and shaking them, opening all the books and dropping them to the floor, tearing away the posters to make sure there were no hidden compartments behind them.

Breathless, Cas leaned back on his heels, and caught sight of a rip in the mattress.

He reached his hand inside it and felt padding and rusty springs, but he reached deeper and felt the cool metal of a very familiar object.

Cas pulled it out, and balanced it in his hands.

The angel blade.

Grinning in triumph, he hooked it into his gun holster and covered it with his jacket before leaving the small space to climb up the spiral stairs of the watchtower.

When he reached the top, he saw a head of bright red hair out on the deck, and a pair of feet propped up on the railing. Next to her, sitting on the ground, was Jim.

He was handcuffed to a post.

She looked up when Cas approached, beer in hand, as though she weren't babysitting a handcuffed man.

"He tried to run," Charlie said, and took a swig of her beer.

"Thank you, Charlie," Cas replied.

"No problem, boss."

He stared down at Jim, who stared back up at Cas in turn, icy blue eyes pleading. "May I have a moment alone with Jim, please?"

"Sure thing," Charlie said, and stood up to leave. She squeezed Cas's shoulder on her way out and met his gaze, giving him a knowing look, like she understood on a deeper level all the chaos that surrounded them.

When they were alone, Cas asked calmly, "Who are you?"

Jim shook his head, confused, "I'm Jim. You _know_ that, Cas. You _know_ me."

"No, tell me who you really are."

Jim ran a hand over his face. "Jesus, Cas, come on. My name is James Eric Furnow. I'm an architect. I have a Masters from the University of Cincinnati. I like to draw— why am I even telling you this? You know it all already!"

Cas squatted down to meet him at eye-level. "I need to speak with the being who saved Dean Winchester on December 31, 2011."

Just like that, a blue light flashed in Jim's eyes, and a slow smile crept up his face. He chuckled, and said, "Hello, Castiel."

Cas tilted his head and lowered his voice. "I'll ask one more time: who are you?"

"What, you don't recognize me?"

"I lack the grace to see your true form, angel. Tell me who you are."

Jim stared at him for a long minute, still smiling, and replied, "Netzach."

A laugh welled up in Cas's chest, but he kept it down. Of course, if there could only be one angel left in this hell called earth, it would be the angel of long-suffering, endurance, and eternity.

It all made so much sense. Beautiful, horrible logic.

If there were a god, his sense of humor was not lost on Castiel.

"Let me guess, Netzach, your grace flickers in and out, right? And that's why you can't escape right now?" Cas lifted the side of his jacket and reached into his holster.

Netzach let out a mirthless laugh. "Seems that way, yeah."

Cas pulled out the blade and watched as Netzach's eyes widened. "Then I should probably make this quick."

Netzach shook his head and scrambled back further. "No no no, Cas, you can't do this. You _love_ Jim, you can't just... you can't—"

Cas couldn't hold it in any longer. He laughed. "I don't _love_ Jim."

Netzach's expression was contorted in pain, and he whispered, "But he loves _you_ , Cas. He always has. Everything he's done since the moment he got here was for you. He just wanted you to be happy. You can't do this to him... to us."

Grinning, Cas replied, "I can, and I will," before shoving the blade into Netzach's heart.

Netzach's mouth opened and he let out a choked, gurgled breath as his eyes glowed blue, a white ether escaping his lips.

"Thanks for everything, Jim, but I don't need eternity anymore." Cas breathed in the mist that escaped from Netzach's lips and closed his eyes, relishing in the feel of real power flowing through his veins for the first time in five years.

Lady Amphetamine had nothing on Grace.

Cas closed his eyes and let it seep through him, let himself breathe it in, touch every nerve in his body. He opened his eyes, and could see the world the way he used to see it as an angel, see all the tethers that connected everything, see all the colors in existence, attend to everything at once.

He stood, pulling the blade from Jim's chest and staring down at his lifeless form, concluding, "I just need this to end."

***

Traveling back in time using another being's fading grace was an agonizing feat.

When he landed, he was at the very last ounce of Netzach's power, and fell to his knees in what appeared to be a darkened alleyway.

_"Don't ever change."_

The voice alone wrenched something in Cas's heart, but he stood, wavering on his feet, and looked around.

Ten feet away, Dean was standing next to a former version of Cas.

He stumbled toward them, pain inching through his body as his borrowed grace sought escape to its rightful owner, a survivalist instinct Cas was unaware grace even had.

Dean looked over and saw Cas stumbling toward them. "Cas?"

 _"Dean,"_ Cas gasped, falling into his arms, unable to carry himself any longer.

"What the hell are you doing here, man?" Dean held him up in his strong, still-compassionate arms.

Cas lifted his head.

He was so close to Dean's lips. His vision was blurring, but he could see Dean's soul again, finally, one last time, that bright light amidst the darkness which he had pulled from hell so long ago.

It was the most beautiful thing Cas had ever seen.

Cas leaned in and pressed his lips to Dean's, gently, reveling in their softness and their sweetness, heart fluttering pitifully in his chest, hands clenched tight in Dean's shirt, pulling their bodies closer together.

There was a brief moment of hesitation where Cas was sure Dean would push him away, but he didn't. He pulled Cas in, parted his lips, and delved into the kiss, just like his future self would have done.

Everything had changed so much, but they were the same man after all.

The kiss was slow and languid and perfect. It was everything Cas wanted to say to Dean but didn't have time to, everything Cas needed Dean to know: that the man at his side was the man who would always be at his side, should always be at his side, no matter what, even if he was not yet a man.

The other Cas, oblivious to such petty things as _love_ , said, "There is still more work to do, Dean."

Cas was sure he heard a touch of jealousy in his tone, which was odd, because it was a concept he didn't learn until much later.

Cas pulled away from Dean reluctantly, and stared up at his face, whose eyebrows were raised in surprise and eyes still closed. He stumbled out of Dean's grasp and fell into his other self's, shoving him against the wall behind him.

 _"You,"_ Cas growled through clenched teeth.

Castiel let himself be manhandled. "At the present moment, that word has multiple definitions."

"I don't need," Cas panted out, consciousness beginning to wane, "your bullshit right now. What I need..." He was glad Castiel was steadier than the brick wall behind him, because he could no longer hold himself up, "is for you to understand that this man," he pointed to Dean, "is all that matters. Drop whatever dumbass mission you have right now, and do whatever the fuck this man wants you to do, do you hear me? He says jump, you ask how high."

"I don't—"

"No, Castiel. Nothing in heaven is more important than Dean Winchester. He is the exact center of this whole universe, of _your_ whole universe, and if anything happens to him, it will collapse. _We_ will collapse." Cas had trouble catching his breath as he continued, _"It's all... for him."_

He slid down the length of Cas's body and fell on his hands and knees, coughing up blood.

The angel blade slid from its holster and fell onto the concrete with a clatter.

When his coughing fit subsided, he picked it up, and forced himself into a kneeling position, looking up at Dean.

He took Dean's hand and turned it around, examining his fingertips.

"You have fingerprints," he muttered, and smiled to himself. 

Then he met Dean's gaze, held the blade out from his body, and said, "See you next year."

Cas plunged the blade into his abdomen, and felt the scraps of grace leave his body, along with his soul.

***

_Being a demon wasn't much different than being a human._

_Dean was pretty sure he did more evil as a human than he had in a year of being a demon. As a demon, he gave what people had coming to them. As a human, he was constantly taking something away from person A to give to person B. Take away person A's life, give person B security._

_Working in deals, everything was cut and dry. Person A would ask for something, Dean gave it to them, then he waited around, and completed the deal when the clock struck twelve._

_It was a circle instead of a scale, and Dean was okay with that._

_The clearing Cas had made was still there, just like they left it. Dean stood in the center of it, staring off into the distance, when he felt the flutter of wings at his side._

_"Hello, Dean."_

_Dean smiled and looked at Cas. "Hey, Cas."_

_Cas smiled back in his strange little way, more with his eyes than his lips._

_"So you're an angel again."_

_Cas nodded. "And you're a demon."_

_Dean looked down at himself. "You can tell, huh?"_

_"It suits you, oddly enough. The power you've always held is now etched over your form."_

_Dean nodded. "That's good to know. I can see your," he gestured over Cas's body, "whole deal too."_

_They stared at each other for a long moment, until Dean broke the silence. "I didn't think you'd come."_

_Cas smiled again, this time with his lips turning slightly up at the edges. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world."_

_Dean grinned, and asked, sheepish, "Hey, can we uhh... you know..." gesturing to the ground around them._

_"Of course we can, Dean," Cas replied, and they both sat down in the center of the clearing._

_It was strange seeing Cas in his lotus position while wearing the old trench coat and rumpled suit get-up, but he made it work._

_As Cas held out his hands for Dean to take, he noticed the Om resting around his neck, and a warmth spread in his heart that he didn't think he was capable of feeling anymore._

_Dean took Cas's hands in his own, fascinated by the current flowing between them that had never been there before, like pushing two magnets with opposite polarity together._

_They were bigger than polarities, though. Their love was bigger than earth, bigger than heaven and hell and reality itself._

_They did not need to be observed in order to exist._


End file.
